


The Prodigal Son

by Batastic_Grayson



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Batfamily Feels, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Multi, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-07-07 13:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batastic_Grayson/pseuds/Batastic_Grayson
Summary: Jason Todd is back from the dead and bent on seeking revenge, justice, and blood. Family tension skyrockets and heads roll...quite literally.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for violence, rape references, and familial tension. Not canon, but definitely inspired by Under the Red Hood.

_Dick_

 

           I think about him incessantly. It’s muscle memory, reflex, at this point, and most days I don’t have the strength to fight it. I just let the memories wash over me like seafoam, let myself feel the ebb and flow of his presence around me. It’s almost like having him back again if I let the fantasy really consume me.

            This morning, I allow my feet to tread to the kitchen without much protest. It’s too early for the sun to show her face, and the countertops are cast in the strange blue red cast of predawn. The outlines of the window panes are navy, the soft reflection of my figure looking a bit like a wraith in the warped glass, and I find myself staring at the empty room for far too long.

            Jason used to get up early, before the whole house, and sit at a barstool with a cup of black coffee. As young as he was, he already had the seasoned habits of Bruce under his belt, and it was somewhat of a ritual to descend the stairs and see him perched at the bar with rumpled boxers and disarrayed hair. He would nod to a coffee mug at the place next to him and we’d sit in silence for a few moments, just savoring the pale sunrise, the smell of French press coffee beans, the steady click of the clock.

            Alfred would eventually round the corner in his terry cloth robe and begin making breakfast, his fatherly eyes casting us warm glances every few moments. I always thought he’d been thinking how much we resembled Bruce, hunkered over a coffee cup with matching scowls. Now, I think he must have seen how comfortable we were with each other. How we didn’t question each other or push for more communication. We just existed. Brothers. Friends.

            A sharp pain slivers its way beneath my ribcage, like a knife just nicking the tender flesh of my lungs, and I struggle for a minute to breathe past the pain. I have to ride out the pain for several minutes, let it engulf me in chilly-fingered hands, before it eventually recedes again to its hiding place. I’m used to it crouching there, and so it doesn’t surprise me when I simply press a hand to my chest and resume making coffee.

            It’s been five years since Jason’s death. Five years since Bruce’s broken whisper over the coms had told me that my brother was dead. He’d been tortured by Joker in a remote warehouse, beaten to a pulp, stripped of his self by the Clown Prince in a moment of vengeful lust against Bruce. And then murdered. He’d wanted to show Bruce that he could take anything from him, own _anything_.

            And he had.

            We found Jason’s broken body beneath the rubble, crushed beyond repair, and almost unrecognizable. His boy’s face was lost to the hand of violence, and I force myself to close away the memory in a deep vault where I can’t feel it anymore. He still haunts my dreams that way, half human, but I never have the strength to send him away. Any version of him is better than how he is now.

            I hear the sound of soft footsteps several minutes into my reflection, and I look up from my spot at my regular barstool to find Alfred lingering in the doorway. He’s propped a shoulder against the doorway, and his eyes are tracing over the empty seat next to me repetitively. He’s never been a transparent character in our home, tending to remain stoic and constant, but today his expression is pained.

            “Today is heavy.” I murmur softly, looking towards the impending sunrise. The sky has started to turn a pale orange that bleeds like watercolor into vibrant purple.

            I hear Alfred take a deep breath, and when my gaze swivels back to him, his eyes are tired. “Indeed, Master Dick.”

            “I keep thinking it’ll get better.” I lift a shoulder, swirling the black coffee around the lip of my mug. “I keep hoping that the years will make today easier…like, maybe time will soften the memories.”

            I look up, find Alfred’s cinnamon eyes regarding me with intensity. “It never does. It’s new every year, every time.”

            The old man nods, those same wrinkles pressing insistently at the corners of his eyes, “Yes. The pain of Jason’s loss renews with each passing year.” He looks down, and for a moment, I see a glimpse of a vulnerable man, grieving the same as we all still do. “He was so young. Just a boy.”

            I nod, my throat closing around a lump, “Yeah…” I attempt to swallow, fail, and settle for a sad chuckle, “He sure pretended he was an old man.”

            Alfred’s mouth tips into a melancholy smile, and he shuffles further into the kitchen, “He took a great deal of pleasure in his imagined maturity, didn’t he?”

            “I mean, what kind of twelve-year-old drinks black coffee and tries to sneak cigarettes?”

            “A very stubborn one, Master Dick. He took after you.” Alfred’s back is to me at this comment, but I feel my eyes burn all the same.

            I clear my throat, “He took after _Bruce_.”

            “Ah, yes,” Alfred angles a look over his shoulder, “But he idolized _you_ , Master Dick.”

            A flash of green eyes invades my thoughts, and I don’t try to blink them away. Memories of Jason are too hard to come by nowadays—like chasing shadows in the fog. I let his eyes, humorous, enthusiastic, intelligent stare into me again. It reminds me of being a younger man, and when I finally let the memory go, I realize tears are clinging to my vision.

            “I miss him.” I murmur, although I can’t be sure why I say it aloud.

            Alfred has paused next to me with a mug of tea, and I feel his aged fingers give my shoulder a squeeze. It’s the extent of our contact before he leaves, but it’s enough to loosen the window to my control. When he’s out of sight, the tears overflow and cry like a child does—no shame, no fear.

Just me and Jason again.            

 

 

_Jason_

The sky looks a bit like cotton balls turned on their bellies today, backed by a sky so blue it could’ve been painted by Michelangelo. The skyscrapers at my back are like glimmering spires, the cars below crawling like bugs. Gotham harbor, for once, almost looks…pretty.

            But that would be giving Gotham too much credit.

            The city itself, upon closer inspection is still riddled with garbage, both human and inanimate alike, and the infrastructure is worn down. The same assholes still run the streets and the same schmucks still people the buildings. It’s breathe smog in, spit venom out. Gotham’s a bit like someone’s smeared frosting on shit and tried to call it a cake. It just so happens that someone is Bruce.

            I gaze through my binoculars at the evenly polished windows of the manor, standing like some pompous beacon of wealth atop this island, and I very nearly grimace. It hasn’t changed much since I left all those years ago, but the people inside seem different. Like looking through a stained glass window that was once clear.

            I search the windows for signs of life, eventually settling on the bay windows that open in the main entryway. The bustle of people moving for work and school flashes by the window like a movie, and I watch patiently. I absorb the details of my prey, trying to rememorize their habits of moving and speaking at this distance.

            Bruce is much the same. Rigid posture, pressed suit, mouth in a flat line. He moves with grace, fluidity, power. Everything about his manner is controlled. I feel a hot fist of anger settle in my stomach just looking at him, something very uncontrolled demanding that I just end this now. I could just as easily confront him right now. But that would ruin all my planning, and I really want to see the look on his face when this all finished.

Seeing Dick is a different story entirely. Even from here, his posture is bundled with energy and grace, dancer-like as he straightens his uniform in a mirror by the front door. His expression is blank, for once. But I still feel a drop of sadness, a long-abandoned emotion, trickle down my spine looking at him. We never shared any bad blood, and knowing what I do about the aftermath of my death removes any resented I might have ended up developing towards him.

            I rankle when the other two appear in school uniforms, and I have to stop myself from cursing when I note how Bruce softens at their entrance. Like fucking clones. The Replacement and the Bastard (my own coinings) are Bruce’s newest pet projects, and he sure does seem pleased with them. Happier than he should be today.

            The anniversary.

            I grind my teeth, hearing them grit together as I wait for the Wayne family to clear out. Eventually, they go their separate ways, shuttling away to their own lives, and Alfred is the only one left. As I expect from weeks of observation, he doesn’t linger long before the Royce pulls out from the driveway. It’s Tuesday. Alfred always gets groceries at nine am sharp.

            That much hasn’t changed.

            I tuck my binoculars back into my pocket, and like any good vagabond worth his salt would do, I proceed to break into Wayne Manor. The security system is advanced, but nothing I’m not intimately acquainted with. I cut the alarm system, and without even breaking a sweat, I find myself treading through the front door like I used do all those years ago.

            It hasn’t changed much. The air is still stuffy with wood polish and old things smell, the décor still elaborate and wealthy, the floors still sparklingly clean. Alfred’s been hard at work keeping the place looking spic and span, and I feel only a little bit guilty when I note that I’ve left a smudge of mud at the front entrance. One of the clones will take the fall for it I’m sure.

            It’s a strange feeling, looking at this house through my new eyes. I used to view the winding staircases and heavy furniture as cozy, something familiar and recognizable. I would’ve cried with relief seeing my old haunts even just two years ago. But now they only serve to evoke feelings of loss, anger, pain. So much pain.

            I didn’t think it would be so hard to come back here, and yet my chest burns. Just being here again is bringing up all kinds of feelings I thought I had successfully crushed. Evidently not.   

            I steel myself, burying that bit of weakness away for another moment when I don’t have more pressing matters. I didn’t come here just to reminisce. I want to leave a message.

            I begin walking through the manor quietly, still taking in the scenery. I poke my head inside a few rooms on my way to Bruce’s, noting with disgust that the Replacement has the bedroom I used to beg for. It was the largest, and had the best view, but Bruce insisted that I use the same room Dick had growing up. For the sake of fairness, or some bullshit like that.

            When I finally come across my own room, I don’t linger to find out what it looks like. I can imagine that they’ve created some type of tomb for Jason Todd. A time capsule to who I was. Moving nothing, letting it remain as it was the day I left. They’ll probably peek in every once in a while, to assuage the guilt brought by slowly forgetting me, and then they will return to the real world. To their new family.

            The thought makes me sick.

            I move forward, scowling, to the end of the expansive hallway where Bruce’s bedroom is. Cracking the door open, I find it much the same as when I left. Remote grey upholstery, a deep maroon bedspread, and tastefully naked walls. A few family photos clutter a desk abutting the far windows, and my stomach pits uncomfortably when I see a younger version of me beaming from one of the frames.

            Looking closer, I see it’s a photograph that Alfred took the first time I was allowed to go patrolling. I was ten years old, and I certainly show it. I’m half their size in the photograph, dressed in the brightly colored Robin costume, and easily twice as excited as Bruce and Dick combined. Even so, my small arms are wrapped around their middles as I stand between them, and my smile is at full wattage.

            The memory of that day is a bit blurred, altered somehow by my dip into the Lazarus Pit, but it’s still a bright spot in my past. Something that now reminds me of what I’ve lost and who I’m not. I turn the photograph on it’s face, not wanting to look at myself anymore. What would ten-year-old me think if he could see me now?

            I don’t bother answering my own question, knowing full well I won’t like the truth, and I instead stride to the bedside table. Bruce is a creature of habit, thankfully, and I find what I’m looking for after only a few minutes of searching through the drawers. He still keeps it exactly where he used to.

            I leave it on the edge of the mattress, knowing he’ll see it when he comes home from work. And then, shortly after, he’ll hear the news.

 

_Bruce_

 

            I’m tired.

            The kind of tired that isn’t just in your bones, but your thoughts and spirit. I can feel its weight, like a damp blanket, draped over my shoulders when I drag myself through the front door and collapse onto the entryway bench to remove my shoes. Even just this small task taxes me, and I have to wonder if it’s because I’ve been pushing too hard lately.

            Really, I know it’s because today is the anniversary. Five years, and I still feel the aches and pains of that day physically, year after year.

            It was like that all day. The presence of today resting on me, heavier as the hours went by and I didn’t acknowledge it. Growing heavier still as I try to maintain the barricade against those memories.

            “Master Bruce. We expected you earlier.”

            I look up from my now doffed shoes to find Alfred peering at me with a raised brow. I don’t have the energy to feel guilty for not calling. “Sorry. I had a meeting that ran late.” I inhale a deep sigh, rolling my shoulders with a grimace, “Where are the boys?”

            Alfred seems to sense my exhaustion, because his tone softens a degree and he dips a chin in the direction of the dining room. “They are in the dining room, eating supper, Master Bruce. We were not sure if you were coming home at all tonight.”

            It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve not come home on the anniversary. The house feels emptier on this day, and every hallway seems to hold Jason’s ghost. Sometimes, it’s best to just avoid home altogether.

        But time has changed things. I have other sons to watch over. It isn’t like it was five years ago when we lost Jason. Dick was an adult, and we could both grieve how we needed to. Damian and Tim are young though…and they need me, even if I don’t feel equipped to be fathering them today.

        A weary sigh escapes my lips before I can stop it, and I scrub a hand over my face. “Could you tell them I’ll be in shortly? I just…” God, I hate how close I am to falling apart today. “I need a moment.”

        Alfred’s gaze, warm like cardamom, assesses me evenly. He’s always known me in a way I don’t even know myself, known what I needed before I did, and I think it must be because he raised me. He was there whenever I fell as a child, and he was there when I stood up again. Looking at him now, I feel very fragile when his gaze softens and he places a hand on my shoulder.

         My control fissures slightly when he gives it a firm squeeze, wordlessly leaving me to myself, and I head for the stairs with my composure barely intact. It isn’t until my bedroom that I let myself fracture, let myself really feel what I’ve been burying all day. I fall into a chair near the door, and like a child, I weep. It’s nice to grieve openly, even if it makes the wound feel more raw, and I lean into the loss for several minutes.

          The tears are always more than I expect, but they’re evidence enough of the heaviness. I thought I knew pain before Jason’s murder, thought I had seen the extent of my heartbreak, but losing a child…

           It irreparably breaks something inside you.

           I’ve been trying to fix that something inside me since he left, and today is just another reminder that I’ve failed.

           Eventually, I gather myself up after a few moments, willing myself to breathe. To calm the hurricane of emotions that rages within my head. Slowly, in degrees, I regain control of my breathing. I am able to rub my palms over my cheeks to dry the tears, able to clear my vision and think about the boys downstairs. They’ll be waiting for me, worried probably, but expectant. I make a point to never miss dinner now. Not since Jason.

           It’s as I am treading to my dresser, intent on finding something more comfortable to wear, that I see the ring glinting from my bedspread. The sight sends an instant sliver of pain lancing through my ribs, and I try to blink away the image I surely imagined. Several unsuccessful attempts to dispel the mirage lead me to the bed, and I reach down to collect the filigreed gold band from the comforter carefully.

           It was one of my father’s rings, and like his father before him, I passed it down to my son. Each of the boys receive a ring when they turn thirteen, one that has been handed down through the Wayne lineage year after year. Father to son.

           This was Jason’s.

            My throat tightens when I remember the expression he wore when I gave it to him. It had been too big for his hands, but he’d worn it on his thumb proudly. All the way until he’d been murdered. I’d slipped it from his bone white fingers at the funeral, and I’d vowed to never look at it again.

            And now here it is. Taunting me.

            I glance to my desk, note the photograph of Jason, Dick, and I is tipped onto its face, and my stomach pits angrily. I assume Tim or Damian must’ve done this, probably an act of childish jealously or an ill-thought prank. This kind of torture is beyond Dick and Alfred, both of whom loved Jason too much to play with his memory.

            I feel acid burn the back of my throat, hot anger replacing the waves of sorrow as I put the ring back in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. I change quickly now, irritation making my movements concise and sharp. When I do reach my door, intent on giving a verbal whipping to one or both of the boys, my temper has reached a new level. It’s white hot and slow, the kind that maims anyone who comes near.

            I’m heading for the staircase stiffly when Dick comes bounding up the stairs two at a time, expression looking wild and urgent. He doesn’t need to explain that I should follow him. I tread down the stairs quickly after him, and we round the corner into the living room just in time to catch the television flashing with red and blue police lights.

            It isn’t the first time we’ve gathered around the television to witness the latest tragedy, but this time feels decidedly different. Darker. More personal.

            My nerves prickle when the images drifting across the screen are of sedate body bags and a very haggard Jim Gordon. The reporter is saying something about a mass execution. The Mulroney crime family has been executed in their west wide mansion. Massacre. Bloodbath. One gunman. Male. Red mask.

            My stomach cramps painfully. I once knew someone who wore a red mask twenty years ago, but he’s in Arkham now. I put him there. Safe and locked away. He can’t hurt anyone else.

            So who is the impersonator pretending to be him?

 

_Jason_

 

            I dream of him.

            Like most nights, he lurks in my dreams, his ghost laying next to me in bed, his words still curving around my ear. His hands are rough, the claws of a crowbar like teeth in my skin, his mouth hissing on my throat. I smell the coppery tone of paint, feel his sweat, my lungs crying for air. Saltwater tears on my cheeks, blood staining my tongue, hands like ice in bonds. He’s too strong for me. Too strong. I feel him at my back, taking, taking, until I have nothing left, and when I wake up screaming, I have to remind myself that I was dreaming. It isn’t real anymore.

          Still, my shaking hands grasp at my chest, my stomach, searching for the blood that must be slicking my skin. I find only a cool sweat, and on my cheeks, tears tracing in streams. I must have been crying again.

           It’s like this sometimes, reliving the nightmare in my dreams. It’s almost a sick kind of joke that sleep brings me closer to my terror. It should help me escape him, but even there, he sits in the corner like a wraith. Waiting to attack again. Waiting to take me again.

           I force a breath in through my gritted teeth, trying to forget the way my chest felt when my lung collapsed. It lingers for a moment, that paralyzed suffocation, before I am able to override the memory and take a shallow inhale. I’m still trembling violently when I sit up and stumble to the bathroom. I turn on the shower, turning the temperature as hot it as goes, before I strip naked and step in.

            I continue shivering for a moment, phantom waves of pain radiating through me, but the hot water starts to help. It scalds my skin to the point of pain, distracting me, and little by little, my muscles loosen. The memory is there, the fear still making my heart sprint beneath my breastbone, but my limbs are loosening again. I take deep breaths of the steam, and I try to replace the memory with reality.

            My name is Jason Todd. I am in Gotham. It has been five years since I died. I am alone.

            It eases me a little bit, and when I step out of the shower, I feel completely drained again. I’d come back to my apartment, a shabby place on the east end of town, a few hours ago after the Mulroney event, and collapsed into bed. I’d considered waking up a few hours later, trying to get going again in hopes of spying on good ole Batsy.

            But I’m too tired now. My body aches, my mind is in splinters. My will to avenge is too broken by the dream to satisfy, and so I shuffle back to my bed and fall into the mattress naked. I tuck myself beneath the comforter, and even as I slip into a dreamless sleep, I can feel Joker lingering in my mind. Always there. Always.

           

            When I wake up hours later, the blue light of dawn is slanting fingers across the bedspread. The slums of Gotham, where I am holed up in a crumbling flat, never enjoy the same sunshine as the more affluent parts of town, so our sunrises are pale and grey usually. The pinks and oranges are reserved for high-rise apartments.

            I’ve gotten used to the murky light that filters to my stoop here though, and after a few months of smelling mold and hearing gunshots nightly, I feel almost at home. It’s the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I left the asylum, and that certainly was never a place I considered homey.

             I rise from the mattress with difficulty, smothering a grimace as I probe the mass of bruising on my upper ribs I garnered from last night’s activities. Although I caught them relatively unaware, they certainly carry a helluva lot of fire power, and my armor had barely held up to the few shots I sustained to my abdomen. A scuffle with a brawny hench-fellow gave me the lovely purple bruising I find now, and I inspect the area carefully. Probably a broken rib in there somewhere.

            I catch a brief glimpse of myself in the mirror on my way to the toilet, but it’s always jarring to see myself again. The Lazarus pit may have brought me back from death, but it certainly did not erase the damage Joker did. I suspect the pit brought me back to the brink, just enough so that I could survive, but its power ended there. I see the evidence of my death in the pocked scars that dot my stomach, the thin white stripe of a knife-path walking up my ribs, the cigarette burns at my collar bones faded from my early childhood.

            I hesitate, a hand going unbidden to my chest, where a particularly ragged scar traces a Y across my torso. It’s from the autopsy, but the sight is no less arresting than the first time I saw it. I trace it a moment, always surprised to feel the warped moon-beam skin under my fingertips. I still remember, very clearly, when I was a boy and relatively unblemished.

            All of these are relatively coverable. Livable. Forgettable if you just don’t look.

            But Joker’s parting gift is the most visible. When he’d finished with me, he’d bent to my cheek and imparted a final scalding kiss. Of course, he’d used an iron and not his lips, and the proof is visible in the strange J that warps my cheek bone. It’s a brand, not dissimilar to what cattle receive. It ties me to him. Through life, through death, and back into life again.

            I inhale a sharp breath as my chest seizes around the clown’s smile, the warped J brand, the white lock at my hairline that marks me unnatural.

            And to think, that piece of shit is still alive. Bunkered up in Arkham with his buddies. Three square meals a day. Weekly visits with a psychiatrist, free medical care, and warm place to sleep. Fuck, some people would die for that kind of treatment.

            It turns out, all you have to do is kill.

            I turn from my reflection, the icy hand of hatred wrapping around my ribcage and squeezing. I hate him. I hate what he’s done to me, who he’s made me. That I’m still here to witness his life play out in a cozy cell while I rot on the streets. That I fear him, even after all this time.

            Most of all, I hate Bruce. For what he didn’t do. For leaving me. For forsaking me when my blood demanded justice. For being so damn weak. It’s why I have to show him, why I’m doing all of this. It’s all for him.

            It always has been.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Dick_ **

 

            “No official news yet, but Gordon told me it was bloody and…strategic. Definitely planned.”

            Bruce hunches over the cave’s computer, shoulders bowed as he types away. He’s hacking a government mainframe, searching for this Red Hood in other cities. Trying to find a history. No luck yet.

            “They still believe it was one man acting alone?”

            I inhale a sigh, crossing my arms over my chest as a spattering of indiscernible code snakes across the screen. "They’ve got security footage. Gordon said he’d get us a copy once they’ve reviewed it officially.”

            Bruce arches a brow, still frowning at the monitors, “And you agreed to that?”

            I scoff, withdrawing a small disk drive from my belt, “Of course I did. But I’m not stupid either. I copied the file from evidence after he left.”

            Bruce takes the disk in hand, sliding it into the computer with a small sigh. He looks tired, and I know it’s because Jason’s been heavy on his mind. When I’d come upstairs to find him last night, he’d been hiding the evidence of a meltdown. I’d suffered my breakdown that morning, and Bruce had seen the tail end, so it isn’t too surprising that we’ve not spoken of it. Every year is like this. Mourning separately, but somehow still together.

            Ships passing in the night.

            When the security footage flickers to life on the monitor, it’s in greyscale and clearly from a low-quality camera, but the massacre is hard to miss when it does begin. The single shooter, now dubbed Red Hood by the media, is impressively quick. Agile, like a fox slipping just out of reach of a dog’s jaws. God, he’s fast. And oddly graceful in his movements. He dodges shots like he’s been born to it, taking life without hesitation and without mercy.

His victims meet the concise edge of a blade or the lightning fast demise of a headshot. There is no weakness in him, no bargaining or speaking, as he systematically executes man after man. I lose track after counting twenty dead, but I can’t seem to look away even when he delivers Mulroney’s execution with an impersonal tilt of his head.

            It’s certainly a horrific spectacle, bathed in gore and harshly cold, and I feel my stomach turn when the man finally tucks his blade against his back and slips his guns into their thigh holsters. He pauses a moment to survey the carnage, the only hesitation we see, before he slips from the mansion as quickly as he came. A fox one moment, a bird fleeing into the night the next.

            I rock back on my heels when the screen flickers black, feeling a grimace press into my mouth, “Well, we know he’s trained.”

            Bruce’s expression has remained stoic, but his cool grey eyes narrow slightly now. He rewinds the video, pauses it on the moment when Red Hood seems to look directly at the camera from beneath his helmet. I almost imagine him smirking.

            “Very well trained…” Bruce muses, and his charcoal brows lower in that way that tells me he’s searching for a connection, “But he wanted to be seen.”

            “But by who?”

            Bruce inhales a sigh, tipping back slightly in his chair. He scrubs a hand along his jaw, now bristled with stubble, and shakes his head. “I don’t know yet. It could be anyone with access or curiosity enough to view this. The police, the mayor…me.”

            I rest a hand on the chairback, pressing my other palm to my temples where a headache has started to bloom. I could use a good night’s rest. “You think Red Hood is specifically targeting you?”

            “It’s a possibility I can’t rule out yet. There is something…familiar about him. It might just be that Joker used the red hood alias for a few years, but this one feels…”

            “Yeah. I know.” I squint at the bleary image of Red Hood, staring boldly into the cameras with blood soaking his shoes. So brash. So pointed. Who is he talking to? “I feel it too.”

            We stare at the image for a long while, listening to the quiet hum of machinery and the faint rustlings of leathery wings above us. The cave has always been peaceful to me, calming with its cool air and solitude. Blue lighting and undiscovered corners. I used to sneak here when I couldn’t sleep, and the stones had granted me purpose and reason. I’d grown up in this cave. Practically become who I am in this cave.

            When a soft sigh brings me back to reality, I find Bruce scrubbing a hand over his eyes wearily. His lips are bracketed with a grimace, his shoulders bent with the long hours. It’s on nights like these, when his grey eyes are tired and his mouth frowns, that he looks his age.

            “You look tired, Bruce.”

            Soft pewter eyes flicker to mine, shallow lines pressing between them as he frowns, “I am tired. Extraordinarily so…but there’s still work to be done.”

            “It can wait until after you catch a few hours. Red Hood isn’t going anywhere you know.”

            Bruce shakes his head, “No, it’s not Red Hood.” At my questioning look, Bruce breathes a soft inhale, expression falling to somewhere that is both disappointed and sad. I recognize the look from my rebellious phase, and I flinch internally.

            “Someone…Tim or Damian, moved some things around in my room. Personal items.”

            I blink, “Like…your toothbrush personal or your diary personal?”

            One of his fists tightens on the computer console, jaw tensing. His voice is rough like sandpaper, “Jason’s ring.”

That name, like always, makes my lungs constrict. I think of my own ring, resting on my middle finger right now, so similar to Jason’s. Our bond as brothers. As Waynes.

            “One of them…moved it. Left it on my bed and tipped over his picture on my desk.” God, his voice is raw. I hate that.

            It’s a cruel act, especially when we are all aware of yesterday’s significance, and my gut immediately rebels against the image of Tim or Damian doing such a thing. They can be immature, as children often are, but they are never intentionally cruel. Never cavalier about Jason’s murder.

            At least, I don’t think they would be.

            I grab the second chair a few feet from me, taking my place at Bruce’s side. We don’t really speak, but it’s unspoken that we have to review the security footage before anyone is punished for the prank. We begin watching the footage at around the time the boys return from school, but the picture frame and ring are already tampered with.

            We go back farther, farther, farther, until my eyes start to burn from watching the same unchanging image of Bruce’s room. When we do at last catch sight of the perpetrator, an audible gasp escapes my lips and I hear the slip of Bruce’s chair as he stands abruptly. We watch the footage twice.

            “My God.”

            I stare at the screen in tandem with Bruce, horrified when he rewinds the footage again and Red Hood waltzes into the bedroom casually. He’s wearing the same garb from the massacre, minus the bloodstains. His posture is relaxed, gait still bearing that strangely familiar arrogance. He knows exactly where the ring is, knows just what photo to tip over. And when he’s finished with this, he looks directly at the hidden camera and dips his chin in a little nod.

            We click through the panel of cameras, watching as he leaves the house with an unhurried stride, locking the front door behind him. Our furthest camera catches him leaving on an unmarked motorcycle a few miles down the property. Never once does he miss gazing into the camera’s lens from behind that unsettling mask, and each time, my heart skips a beat.

            Who the hell is this man? And how does he know us?

            When I look over to Bruce, his expression is caught somewhere between a scowl and a look of shock. The video loops again, repeating the footage, but all I can do is look to Bruce. He’ll know what to do. He always does.

            Bruce eventually stops the video, and his silver eyes fall to mine. We both read the moment, feel the inherent danger in someone this violent knowing our identities. It’s a bit like finding out you’ve been spied on naked. Disarming. Violating.

            Frightening.

            My thoughts instantly cast to the boys, to Alfred…to Babs, twisted in pools of blood like Red Hood left the Mulroney syndicate. If this is personal, how slow will he make their deaths? How much time do we have before he digs the knife in deeper?

            Bruce blinks, vulnerable for just a second of indecision, before his mouth flattens into a line and he tips his chin to the manor. “Get everyone down here. We need to move quickly and carefully on this.”

 

**_Bruce_ **

 

           _Her eyes are always like sea glass in my dreams, unclear, fogged by time. Sometimes I wish I could remember their real hue, something I am told was the purest of blues, but it’s like trying to catch grains of sand. They slip from my fingers, and my memory, unfortunately, only recalls their cast when she’d been laying on the wet pavement. Ivory hands, limp on a new dress. Midnight hair, matted to her cheek with rainwater._

_Broken pearls laying so bright, like miniature moons against inky blackness._

_He is always just an impression to me. I have the vibrant image of his coat, his veined hands grasping mine weakly. There’s blood staining his fingertips, and he’s trembling. But I forget his exact eyes, forget how his brows must’ve furrowed in agony and grief. I only see his mouth, whispering words through gritted teeth. I think I see tears tracing his jaw at the edges of my memory, but I can never be sure._

_In my dreams, I don’t scream like I did that night, so many years ago. I don’t say anything, because I’m terrified to forget how their heartbeats sounded against my ears. I’m even more afraid that I’ll forget the sharp inhale of my father’s last breath._

_This time, I come to them as myself. Older, wiser. No longer a little boy. No longer afraid just for himself._

_But their image is warped this time. Distorted with reality, merging with the flickering of that security camera footage. In alternating moments, my mother’s corpse becomes Alfred’s. Dick’s. Damian’s. Tim’s._

        No, please. No more.

_Pearls on wet pavement._

_My father, whose image was so precise and yet so flawed, wavers and Jason as I last saw him appears. His body is twisted, his eyes clouded and dull, proud mouth loose. His pale hands, small, so small, are in mine. God, they’re cold. They shouldn’t be so cold. I reach a hand to touch his cheek, find my fingers are trembling violently. He’s grey. He shouldn’t be grey._

         God, I don’t want to be here. I want to wake up. Please let me wake up.

_Ash fills my nose, the sound of sirens like strange weeping echoing from that five-year memory, rubble pushing into my knees, and this time I do scream. It’s a strange sound here in my dream, more like an animal being beat to death, and I very much wish that I could lay down in the ash next to my boy and be no more._

_But I continue. My heart beats rebelliously beneath my ribcage, and just when I think I might finally be able to tear myself from this hellscape, back to reality, a hand grasps mine tightly. I look down to the body in my arms. No longer my father, my longer my son._

          Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

_Red Hood stares into me from behind that mask, his hand squeezing my own until I feel the bones pop, the tendons protest. His fingers dip into my skin, blood drawing in crescents beneath his nails. And then, his voice, like a familiar nightmare heard somewhere forgotten._

_“ Bruce.”_

_I scream._

            I jerk, nearly knocking my head against my desk before I catch myself. I realize abruptly, blessedly, that I am awake. And a moment later, that I am still in my office at Wayne Enterprises.

            My gaze flickers to the bay windows behind me, finding the thin cloak of darkness already settling over the smog-ridden streets of Gotham. The skyscrapers are casting long shadows over the tiny specs of light below, slivers of sunshine still managing to press through the cracks. Soon, it will be dark.

            Admittedly, I’ve been spending too much of my time here at WE trying to figure out this Red Hood figure. Pouring over old police reports from other cities, trying to find a connection. Most of all, trying to figure out how he knows us. Why he’s so God damn familiar.

            I glance at my watch, my chest tightening when I realize it’s past dinner again. “Shit, shit, shit.”

            I grab my jacket, pulling it on hastily as I jog for the doorway. Finding the elevator already occupied, I take the stairs two at a time. It’s a long way down, but the trip gives me time to call Alfred and apologize profusely. He just sighs, understanding and chastising all at once. I feel his chiding more harshly today, probably because this will be the last dinner with all of us together for at least a couple weeks.

            With our newest security breach, I’m sending Damian, Tim, and Alfred out of country for a bit, until we can pin Red Hood down and make him talk. Dick stubbornly insisted on staying, and I’m a bit ashamed to say that I let him because I could use his help. Being alone, as safe as it is for the others, certainly impedes progress and makes catching this son of a bitch a lot harder.

            And right now, catching him is all I can think about him.

_Dick_

I listen to the soft hush of the ropes, the creaking of metal loops on wooden posts. We make a kind of music, the trapeze and I. It’s a chorus of catching hands, feather-soft dowels, chalk falling like mist. My breath is but a quiet part of the symphony, in and out, in and out, working with my limbs as I push myself forward. Whispered music plays from somewhere beyond my ears, blending memory with reality, sewing itself into my lungs and heartbeat.  

            I catch a bar with my fingertips, the heat of friction working against my palms as I rock back and forth, and then as I’ve done so many times before now, I let go. And I fly.

            The feeling of falling is the same today as it was almost twenty years ago. Like the floor dissolving underneath your toes, the world swirling around you in blurred colors, your ears hollowing to the rush of your blood and the cacophony of your breath. All that exists in that moment is the bar, the powdered chalk dusting my fingertips, the play of a song I used to know dancing against my thoughts.

            If I close my eyes, I can hear the circus master shouting praises, smell candy corn and peanuts, hear the gasp of a crowd as I soar high above them. No net. Never a net to catch me. Just the slippery hands of air. And my parents. They were always there to catch me when I flew.

            Now I feel the bar hit my palms roughly, and I’m forced to catch myself.

            Flying is always bittersweet for me, like pressing on a bruise that will never quite heal. The pleasure of remembering my parents, mingled with the pain of losing them.

            I soar between the bars again, pushing faster. My chest gives a dull throb when I spin around a bar a few times, letting go to fly again. Chalk dust floats down to the floor beneath me.

            That familiar song is still playing, one that I keep recorded on a tape, so that I can peruse the catacombs of my childhood every once in a while. It’s a fuzzy recording, something secondhand of a Romanian song my mother used to sing to me.

         I have vivid memories of watching my parents dance to the lilting melody as I sat in bed, watching their figures cast shadows against our tent wall. It had been like a fairytale when I was that young, living with the elephants and the acrobats and my parents. Their eyes had spoken love when they danced like that, singing to each other, to me, with soft eyes and embracing arms. My mother would lean her head on my father’s chest, blue eyes watching me with a smile.

_“Fly, little robin. Fly.”_

_Her hands depart from mine, her whisper following me as I soar through the silky night air. Her eyes stay on me though, gentle, so gentle. I think for a moment that I might fall to the ground below, I’m so focused on watching her. But my father’s hands close around mine like they always do, warm and strong and ever-present._

_He smiles, whispering his pride, and I fly again._

         I open my eyes when the air whistles past my ears, barely catching the edge of the trapeze. I let myself slow, allow myself to work a few breaths past the thickness in my throat. I never imagine what they looked like in their deaths anymore- not like I used to. I’m not strong enough.

         After a moment of working breaths into my lungs, forcing myself to let go of that memory, to imagine them dancing again, I let myself drop. It’s not an incredible fall like the circus would have been, and I land crouched at the bottom on the protective padding Bruce insisted on installing when I’d first asked him to put in a trapeze set. It seems a bit like cheating, having this figurative safety net lurking below, but I’ve allowed it for the sake of Bruce’s peace of mind.

         “I always forget how easy you make that look.”

         I look up from the padded mat to the darkened edge of the gym, unsurprised to find Barbara sitting with a small smile dancing around her mouth. She’s holding a cup of coffee in her lap, a wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders. It’s beyond a decent hour to be awake, but Babs and I have always operated on the same unconventional clock. We are awake when we can’t be, and asleep when we shouldn’t be.

          I offer a small smile, straightening from my crouch. I collect a towel and mop the sweat from my face and neck as I walk towards her. “Hey. You’re up late.”

          She shrugs, taking a small sip of that coffee, “I was working on some intel for Bruce and lost track of time. Then I heard the music and I figured I’d come watch you.”

          I lean over to the tape player still repeating my parents’ lullaby, switching it off. The loss of the song is both welcome and lonely. The air feels colder.

          “Yeah. I couldn’t sleep.” At Babs questioning look, I lift a shoulder, “Just thinking about that Red Hood case. I don’t know why it’s getting to me more than usual.”

          She nods, extending her hand out in offering. I don’t say anything as I take it, and she begins smoothing her thumb over the back of my hand. “It’s personal. And Jason’s anniversary wasn’t too long ago.” I feel her lips brush against my knuckles, “It’s been a hard week. For all of us.”

           I nod, looking up at the bars suspended above. They look stark in the dimmed light, strangely foreign. “Bruce is troubled by him, which only makes me more anxious.” I shake my head, trying to describe the feeling of déjà vu, “I just keep thinking we must know this guy from somewhere. Personally, somehow. And having him show up so close to Jason’s anniversary just makes things…”

           “Worse,” Babs supplies, her tone muted. When I look to her, I find her eyes sedate, looking up to the trapeze with a loss mirroring my own. Sometimes I forget that she lost a brother in Jason as well, and it makes me feel guilty that I’ve neglected checking on her these past few days.

            “How are _you_ doing, Babs? I’ve been so wrapped up in myself that I haven’t asked.”

            Sapphire eyes flit to mine, fragile like a bird’s for a moment, before she looks down to her lap. Her fingertips begin tracing the stitching on the blanket absently. “I’m doing alright. Not great…but not the worst I’ve been.” She pauses, and I see her throat work in a swallow. “I just miss Jay—his tricks, and inappropriate timing, and honesty. He made loss manageable. Made tragedy seem light.”

            I see the cast of her expression, that same grey color that possesses her eyes whenever she shows me her true thoughts. One of her hands has taken to tapping at her loose knee. The limb remains as lifeless and unresponsive as it has been for three years now, ever since Joker took her ability to walk with a bullet. She’s now relegated to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down without a hope of recovery.

            I think often how she must relate to Jason, must feel the pain he would’ve felt suffering at the hands of that monster, and it sometimes overwhelms me with anger again. With bloodlust and heartache anew. I hate that he’s taken so much from us, hurt so many people that I love.

            It’s times like these that I wish Bruce would have let me kill the clown.

            Seeing Barbara stare at her wheelchair hatefully, stare at the trapeze longingly, makes the feeling even more acute. It’s not the first time I’ve prayed to change places with her, to take her affliction if just for one day, but I know that time cannot move backwards. Not even if I prayed on my hands and knees.

            I give Babs’ hand a squeeze when I see that she’s drifted off somewhere beyond me, and her pearl blue eyes return to me gradually. They’re still sad, heavy with a weight I never thought she’d have to carry, and I find myself brushing a fingertip down her ivory cheek, if only to remind myself that she’s still here. She sighs, closes her eyes, leans into my palm.

            I swallow the lump in my throat, tipping my chin to the bars mingling like swings forty feet above us. “Do you want to join me?”

            Cerulean eyes open, colored with pain, “Dick, you know I can’t…not anymore.”

            I shake my head, and I lead her over to the equipment area of the gym. I withdraw a harness I had specifically made with this in mind, thinking that I’d meant to surprise Barbara with this for her birthday. It was going to be romantic. But I don’t want to wait anymore.

            “You don’t mean…”

            I nod. “If you want to.”

            Her hands twist and untwist in her lap, indecisive even as she gives a gentle nod, “Okay.”

            Barbara doesn’t say much when I kneel before her and slide the harness over her pajamas. Her pale eyes just watch me, withdrawn and unsure, when I eventually pull her to a stand and begin clipping her to my back. The system is a bit like a piggy back ride, one where she’s secured with lots of latches and Kevlar straps, but the same principle.

            When I finally begin climbing the trapeze, putting distance between us and the ground, her arms go around my neck, and I feel her grasp my t-shirt collar tightly. Her breath is soft against my throat, feathered with her rapid heartbeat, and I can only imagine how it must feel to be climbing again.

            At the top, I tilt my chin over my shoulder, trying to catch her wide eyes. “Are you ready?”

            She nods, gaze on the ground forever below us. “Yes.”

            As I’ve envisioned many times, I take one gentle step and then leap off the trapeze ledge. Barbara inhales sharply, her heart pressing into my back as we fly through the air, weightless for a moment. The air hangs heavy around us, filtered through chalk dust and the perfume of wood, before my arms catch us. We swing in tandem, like we used to when we were younger and more foolish. And just like our days as children, running the streets with dreams in our heads and light hearts, we soar again.

            We do this for several minutes, leaping through the empty vacuum with her hands still tight on my shirt, her chest pressed firm to my back. I can hear her breath, rough and weeping at my ear, as teardrops fall on my shoulders. They’re warm and steady, anguished and joyful. It’s a bittersweet moment we share, like a memory we forgot and found again beneath the stairs, covered in dust and warped by water. Still so familiar to us, so natural to exist in harmony, like two dancers moving in sync. And yet, now soured by circumstance and impossibility.

            When I grow somewhat lightheaded from breathing in chalk and my hands have started to ache, I take us to the ledge and seat us both there. Babs has leaned her head against my back, tears still pressing damp into my shirt, and she doesn’t let go even when the tears cease. Even when her heart has slowed and the gym is quiet save our breathing, she holds my shirt tightly.

            Eventually, her hands loosen, and she presses a tearful kiss to the nape of my neck. “Dick…I don’t know what to say.”

            Her words are whispered, barely audible, and I take one of her hands to brush my lips across her knuckles. “I know. It’s okay.”

            We sit like this for so long that I begin to wonder if it might be past sunrise, and eventually we descend from the trapeze silently. Babs and I ride upstairs in the elevator together, our hands knitted between us, until we reach the room where she usually stays when the nights are too long. Her hand drops from mine reluctantly at the doorway, and she wheels inside with a glance behind her. I follow her inside wordlessly, letting the door close softly behind us.

 

**_Bruce_ **

****

“How’s London treating you two?”

          Tim shrugs a shoulder, smiling tentatively, “It’s okay. The food’s a bit lacking, but we’re alright. Alfred’s been pretty excited to show us the local culture, so that’s been fun.”

          “How’s Damian taking it all?”

           The boy smirks, pushing a hand through his messy black hair, “Eh…you know Damian. Same attitude, different day.”

           My gaze narrows, “Is he minding Alfred?”

           “What do you think?”

           I sigh, rubbing a hand over my jaw, “I’ll speak with him.”

           We fall silent for a moment, and I take a moment to study Tim through the video call we’ve arranged. He’s wearing a hoodie, looking as comfortable in his own skin as he does usually, but he looks tired. His pale blue eyes are underlined in dark shadows, and his brow is wrinkled in a way that doesn’t become his young age.

            A hand of guilt presses on my breastbone, that shadow of Jason’s memory trying to surface, and I frown, “You look tired, Tim.”

            His eyes flash to me from where they’d fallen in his lap, and he attempts a smile, “I’m okay. You know I don’t sleep well in new places. It’s hard to relax fully.” A beat of silence, followed by a hurried attempt to hide the heaviness of his tone, “But I’ll adjust. The nightlife here is pretty boring, so I’m sure I’ll have more than enough sleep in no time.”

            I level him with an arched brow, “Uh-huh. Is that really all that’s bothering you?”

            Tim’s always been easy to read, and even the monitor can’t hide when his eyes flash in a lie, “Yep.”

            “Tim…”

            My tone is a warning he knows well, and I watch as his shoulders dip and he inhales a deep sigh. “I’m just worried, Bruce. You’ve never sent us away like this, not even when we were facing serious baddies—Luthor, Joker, Harvey. It just makes me uneasy’s all.”

            “They never knew our identities which, unfortunately, makes this Red Hood character a whole lot more dangerous.” I sigh, chest heavy, “Look, Tim, it isn’t that I don’t want you fighting beside me.”

            His eyes flicker to mine and I can tell by their pale color that I’ve struck a chord.

            “I have to protect what means most to me, Tim, especially if I’m the one being targeted. You, Damian, Alfred…” I hear the question before he even voices it, and I lift both my hands, “The only reason Dick stayed is because he is an adult. I can’t protect him anymore, but I would’ve sent him with you all if I could.”

            Tim sighs, looking more appeased, but still unhappy. I’m so used to his energy, the joy that he carries with him, that the departure is a bit jarring.

            “I understand, I really do. Can you just…” He lifts a shoulder, “Can you keep me in the loop? Make me at least _feel_ like I’m doing something?”

            I nod, “Of course, Tim. I’ll keep you posted.” We sit in silence for a minute more, bidding each other goodnight. I tell Tim to get more sleep, and then tomorrow, some sun. He’s looking too pale.

            Damian is next. He spends most of our call trying to pick information out of me, and I spend most of it trying to chastise him appropriately for ignoring Alfred’s rules. It’s a hit and miss conversation, but it’s nice to see that he’s maintained his fire and doesn’t seem too angry that I’ve exiled him to Europe for now. He understands the necessity, even if it chafes at his pride.

            When Alfred’s face eventually fills the screen, and he lifts a haughty brow, I chuckle. “The boys have been giving you that much trouble, Alf?”

            He scoffs, but a smile is playing at the edge of his mouth, and he smooths a hand through his gunmetal hair absently as he sets down the tablet. I can see he’s moved to the kitchen of the flat and is dicing onions leisurely, “Oh no, Master Timothy has been most accommodating and helpful. Master Damian, however, has been a trial in patience, I will confess.”

            “Well, I spoke with him. He should be better behaved, at least for the next few days.”

            Alfred lifts that belligerent brow, pursing his lips. “I shall have to start to the clock now, Master Bruce, and let you know later how long that lasts.” He humphs, but he’s smiling ruefully now, “He truly is his father’s son.”

            I remember very clearly the days of my youth when Alfred had to near chain me to my bedpost to keep me safe from my own ambition. Damian is much the same, except he is perhaps even more wild than I was. I blame that on Talia’s side of the family.

            “Well, son or not, he’ll have to behave until this whole storm blows over.”

            Alfred’s eyes, a bit like cardamom, shift to me as he begins peeling a few potatoes, “Speaking of storms, have we learned anything new of our masked friend?”

            I tip back in my chair, struggling not to feel a bit miffed as I’m forced to admit the truth. “Not really. He’s been…more difficult to track than I anticipated, but I think I’ve nailed down where he’ll be tonight. He’s been negotiating trade deals with all the major crime bosses, and I’ve heard rumblings that Valentino Fallon is meeting a large buyer tonight on the lower east side. I can only hope this Red Hood is the buyer.”

            Alfred nods, tossing the diced vegetables into a simmering pot with a flourish, “Ah, I expect the Bat will be making an appearance?”

            “Yes. I think it’s time we met face to face.”

            “Or rather, mask to mask, Master Bruce. We still have no idea of this character’s identity, whether he be friend or foe.”  
            I frown, my stomach tightening a bit as I consider the “friend” angle. I have been focused on former enemies, scorned lovers, past wrongs I’ve committed, but I’ll admit that I’ve been more than a bit reluctant to look up old friends in connection to Red Hood. The skeletons in that closet are deep and dark and often times, not worth exploring.

            “He broke into the manor, Alfred. I wouldn’t consider that friendly behavior.”

            The old man nods, “But he did not steal anything, Master Bruce.”

            “He moved Jason’s things.”

            “He sent a message,” Alfred corrects gently, dark eyes steady even through the imperfect image sent to the screen. He lifts a brow, expression gentle and yet assertive, as he always is when he’s trying to be delicate. “He could have taken many a priceless artifact if he were a simple thief, or he could have left a much more visceral message had he been so inclined. I was home alone all afternoon, and certainly _that_ would have been more threatening than moving a ring and turning over a picture.”

            I shudder involuntarily when I think about the boys the coming home to find Alfred’s body, left mangled and bloodied somewhere in the house. A message shouted through violence. Instead, Red Hood had left a subtle message. Nonviolent, nonthreatening really. Just a ring and a picture.

            But they were Jason’s, and the very memory of my boy is now marked by violence and threat.

            My stomach tightens again thinking about my son, thinking about why he is so significant to Red Hood, and I think for a moment that perhaps Joker is toying with me. Perhaps he’s sent someone to intimidate me, to remind me of what he took from me.

            But that’s just not possible. I’ve had eyes and ears inside Arkham for years, and no one has made any moves to contact Joker regarding Jason. Sure, he’s received the usual fan mail from the degenerates of society, but there’s been no word of Red Hood before the Mulroney family execution. It’s like he just…materialized.

            “Master Bruce?”

            I look up, realizing I’ve slipped into deep thought without even realizing it, and I shake my head to clear the dark webbings of my mind, “Sorry Alfred. Just trying to make all the pieces fit together.”

            Alfred gives a knowing smile, already stirring the pot of stew bubbling on the stove top. “Well, in that case, I suppose I should leave you to your brooding. Keep us informed of your progress, Master Bruce. The boys do miss Gotham terribly.”

            “I know.”

            “And do tell Master Dick and Miss Gordon that I expect a call shortly from them as well.”

            I smile, feeling my chest warm a little bit at the small reminder that our family, however broken and hobbled, is still just that. A family.

            “I will, Alf. Goodnight.”


	3. Chapter 3

**_Jason_ **

 

            I feel him following me long before he reveals himself.

            The feeling is a bit like having your eyes closed, and yet you know someone is watching you. The next thing you know, they’re leaned over your bed, breathing in your ear.

            Or in this case, lingering on a rooftop a block or so back with a pair of binoculars.

            I turn the next alleyway corner with ease, keeping my posture relaxed even when I hear the very slight thud of boots landing behind me. If I weren’t listening for the sound, I wouldn’t have caught it. But I am listening, and I’ve had a lot of experience patrolling with Bruce. I know how he thinks. How he moves.

            Which is why I manufactured this whole meeting with Fallon. It’s all a farce of course, we met three weeks ago to finalize my authority over his territory, but I knew Bruce would catch wind of it and try to stop me if I told the right people. I knew they’d blab and he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

            It’s a bit comical that he’s so predictable. Even down to his decision to move Alfred, the Replacement, and the Spawn to London. It just makes it easier to get to him without them buffering him. Of course, there’s still Dick and Babs to think about…but I think I’ll manage them just fine. We were always closer, the three of us, and they’re the sentimental types.

            It’s three blocks later, when I’ve begun pushing past crates of fishing gear and decrepit wood pilings, moving ever closer to the wharf, that he decides to make a move. The air is rife with brine and the odor of dead fish, but I would recognize the faint smell of Kevlar, coffee beans, and aftershave anywhere. It’s distinctive and light, but it’s enough to let me know he’s close.

            I turn just in time to catch a bladed forearm that was about to make contact with my skull, and I lift a petulant brow beneath my mask, “Took you long enough.”

            Batman, this close after having stayed away so long, is a bit overwhelming if I’m being honest. He’s updated the suit, added some kind of alloy that makes it more flexible, fine-tuned the gauntlets, manufactured a more sedate belt. But the mask is the same. The brows are still lowered into a sinister glare, the white lenses of the mask still ever seeing, the set of his mouth still pulled into a scowl that is designed to frighten.

            He breathes intimidation, but admittedly, I only feel a bit of nostalgia looking at him again. It’s like seeing a memory in person, and it makes me somewhat uncomfortable that it throws me off.

            The moment of study between us is brief, but it’s enough to give Batman the upper-hand again. He growls, pushing forward with a knee aimed for my solar plexus. I dodge the blow neatly, returning the blow with a sharp jab to his ribs. We do this for a few moments, parrying back and forth, but never touching. We’re both pulling our punches, purposefully keeping the interactions easy and uncomplicated.

            I know for a fact that if Batman wanted to, he could wipe the floor with me. Well, at least he could a few years ago. Now? Maybe not.

            _Focus, Jason. Don’t deviate._

            I direct a fist at his face, catching his jaw sharply with a snapping sort of sound. The contact of the blow throws us both off kilter, but it takes only a minute for Batman to bare his teeth again and advance back on me. He swings a leg out to catch mine, and I feel my balance give way easily. I saw the move coming, but I let him take me to the ground. I’m curious how far he’ll take this.

            He settles his weight on my chest roughly, and my helmet knocks against the pavement with a sickening crunch when a fist makes contact with my right temple. My ear rings for a moment, a hollow filter falling over my hearing, even as Batman leans forward and snarls. My chest tightens with an echoed memory, something like smelling smoke from a distantly burning fire, and I force my mind to turn from the last time I was pinned like this.

            Joker had liked pushing me into the pavement like this. Liked how it made me look, he said.

            _Not now, Jason. Focus on the mission, Jason._

            I direct my attention back to Batman, trying to remind myself that I’m here to talk, not fight. I’m here to disorient, not beat. But I feel his hands on the lapels of my jacket when he hoists me up, his hips pressed sharply into my ribs, making it hard to breathe. His whole posture is tense, hands rough like talons as he knocks me around a few more times, and I feel a dribble of blood trace down my cheek inside the helmet.

            I would give anything to shove him off me and make him pay for all of it.

            _Focus, Jason._

            It’s been a while since I’ve let myself get beat like this, but I force my body to remain limp and pliable beneath him. As much as I want to beat him to a bloody pulp right now, that was never the point of tonight.

            But boy is it something to watch him try to beat his anger into me. I haven’t seen him whale on someone like this, up close and personal, since before I died. And those were criminals he was brutalizing. Now that it’s me, it’s almost…comedic. Like seeing a circle finally completed.

            Eventually though, Bruce does what he always does. His hands tighten on my jacket and he brings me in close, teeth barred in a frightening grimace. It’s his signature move.

_Breathe, Jason. Focus._

            “Talk.” He growls, and if I weren’t wearing the mask, I imagine I would feel the sharp exhale of his breath on my skin.

            I let out a breathless chuckle, my ribs starting to ache where his knees dig in, “That’s your opener, huh? A little weak, Bats.”

            He shoves my head into the pavement, and I see stars for a moment as he hisses a commanding, “I’m in no mood to play, Hood. Start talking before I start breaking.” At this, one of his elbows leans into my collarbone, pressing just enough that I feel the bone cry out weakly. Any more pressure and it’ll snap like a wet carrot.

            I grimace, working for lightness in my tone, “It’s the old age isn’t it? Makes it hard to banter without losing your breath, eh?”

            Batman digs his knees into my sides, pressing sharper into my collarbone. I hiss, and his mouth twists into a satisfied glare, his teeth gleaming like fangs in the alley light, “I wouldn’t know. You tell me.”

            The value of laying here in submission is fast losing its glamor for me, but I want to talk with him a little bit more before I end our date. Push him just a bit more before I leave him. But damn, is it taking a lot of self-control not to throw him off me and take my pound of flesh.

            _Control, Jason. It’s not time yet._

I growl, hating that voice still creeping through my head, telling me what to do. It’s never my own, always Bruce’s, like a ghost from somewhere beyond the grave. If I could murder that voice, just for some peace, I would.

            As it is, I work for a full breath in from under Batman’s crushing weight. I eventually managed a sip of air, which promptly escapes in a hiss of pain when he shifts a knee deeper into my side. That ball of anger flares hot, so hot it begins to press my heart tight against my ribcage, beating fast and hard.

            “What’s the matter Bruce? Scared?” His expression twists into a sneer, a rough hand shoving my head into the pavement again. My vision flickers for a moment, and I manage a weak chuckle, “Oh, I know about everything. Where you live, what you do in your free time, who you love…”

            He directs an elbow into the soft part of shoulder, striking with the precision of a viper, and I let out a grunt of pain. That’s gonna leave a nasty mark.

     “It was so easy…getting in…making myself at home…” I suck in a sharp breath when he leans heavier, still baring his teeth above me viciously, more animal than man, “I know…everything about you, Bruce. All your…dirty secrets.”

      A gloved hand presses into my windpipe, dangerously close to cutting off my airway, and I think for a moment that I’ll have to abandon the teasing for the sake of escaping. But then I remember that Bruce couldn’t even kill the Joker for me. What makes me think he’d end me? He doesn’t have the courage.

_Don’t forget your mission, Jason. Don’t get distracted._

     His fingertips press into my jugular, and my vision hazes for a moment. “What do you want?”

     Such an easy question, really, and it occurs to me that I should have answer rehearsed. I should’ve thought of this, but it’s hard to put my finger on just one want. I have many things I want—vengeance, justice, pain, relief, time. I want more than I can have, and certainly more than he can grant me.

      My voice is thin as a reed, garbled by the hand tightened around my throat, but I manage a snarled, “Vengeance. I want vengeance, old man.”

      The nickname I coined for him as a child has the desired effect. His expression folds in on itself for a fraction of a second, crumpling like wet paper, and I imagine his eyes are blinking down at me in shock behind the white lenses. His mouth is certainly bracketed in cold confusion, anger, sadness. He looks more like himself than he has all night, and seeing him stripped away to nothing like this makes it hard to focus on the mission.

       Looking up at him now, I don’t see the Batman. I don’t see the mask twisted in hatred or feel the hand closed around my throat. I don’t hear the blare of taxi horns distantly or smell the fish brine hanging around the pier. I see Bruce. Grey eyed Bruce with a stubborn mouth and coffee breath and a warm voice. A father, lost somewhere five years ago when I died in that warehouse, alone and broken.

      Lost when he didn’t come for me.

       When he didn’t avenge me.

       When he forgot me.

       The overwhelming sense of loss and betrayal makes me feel very small for a moment, weak, and definitely unprepared to fight. Unable to fight. Unable to fight him off. It’s not  Joker, but I can smell that paint again. Feel his weight on me, the violence of the crowbar like a shadow passing over my skin.

        It’s just Bruce, but God he’s looking at me like he hates me. He hates me. He hates me. He hates--

_You’re losing yourself, Jason. Losing focus._

        I blink, feeling that wedge of myself still very much trapped at thirteen years old recede somewhere with a ducked head. I’m ashamed of that part of me, ashamed of that weakness that bleeds through me into my posture as Batman looks down on me in shock. I feel his pain, his grief, his revulsion, and it only makes me angrier.

        The darkness that I was hoping to keep at bay until our next meeting rears its head viciously, so sudden I don’t have time to check it, and I buck my hips upward to dislodge Bruce from my chest. He’s still taken off guard by the nickname, because he topples off me with a grunt, and I easily gain the advantage. I attack him like a wild animal, holding nothing back as I tear into him with all my might.

         My fists are bloodied, my cheeks marked with tears of rage, by the time I run out of energy and I’m forced to stumble off his crumpled form. He’s collapsed on the pavement, taking labored breaths, somewhere between consciousness and darkness, but he’s watching me. I’ve broken one of the lenses in the cowl during my rampage, and one swollen grey eye assesses me critically. I can see him measuring me, feel the calculations running in his mind as he smudges blood from his mouth onto the back of a hand.

           He knows. Maybe not fully. Maybe not consciously. But he knows.

           I swipe my hands on my pantlegs, trying to remove the slick blood covering my palms. Bruce still hasn’t moved. He’s just watching me from the ground, gaze shadowed. But God, do I feel it. Do I feel his eyes on me.

_Leave, Jason. You’ve finished. Leave._

            I grimace, wanting to spit at him and hug him and scream all at once. But I instead turn on a booted heel, heading for my bike a few alleys over, and I call over my shoulder, “I’ll see you around, old man.”

            I can’t be sure if it’s my own thoughts or the wind, but I swear I hear my name whispered from that dark alleyway behind me.

 

**_Dick_ **

 

            Barbara’s phone hums from the bedside table sometime after nine the next morning. The sky is still grey outside, shrouded like most days in heavy Gotham rain and smog, so the room remains relatively dark. I feel her shift next to me, reaching for her phone, and the blue of the screen illuminates her groggy features a moment later.

            I don’t think too much of the text, considering she’s Oracle and being technologically connected is a must, until she rolls away from me. I feel the absence of her heat sharply, and I groan, reaching for her waist. She is surprisingly stiff beneath my hands, and the tension in her posture is enough to make me sit up halfway with sandy eyes and a frown.

            I find her peering at the screen of her phone intensely, glasses perched at the edge of her nose, teeth worrying her lip absently. It’s an expression she only adopts when focused on a mission or anxious.

            I brush at her auburn hair, frowning, “Hey. Everything alright?”

            Eyes like tourmaline flash up to mine, tight and guarded, and she hesitates, “Yeah, everything’s fine. Just a text.”

            I lift a brow, rubbing at my eyes with a grimace, but I settle next to her again with my face close to hers. “Mm? Who is it?”

            Babs hesitates again, those brows drawn sharply over her eyes. Her lips part around an answer and close again a moment later. Just when I’m starting to worry that something may be seriously wrong, the unwelcome intrusion of grinding gears and a rumbling engine issues from outside the window. We both jolt upright, exchanging a glance.

            “What the hell is that?”

            I shake my head, sliding out from beneath the comforter to peer through the curtains. The rain is coming down in heavy sheets, each one thundering against the glass and the lawns beyond, but I can see the vague outline of a yellow backhoe several hundred feet away. After a moment of squinting, I am finally able to distinguish that it’s Bruce who is driving the piece of machinery, and that he’s digging a massive hole in the family plot.

            He’s digging up a grave.

            “What is it?” Babs murmurs from behind me, still in bed but watching me with owlish eyes.

            I’m already pulling on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, rushing towards the doorway. “Bruce is digging up the family plot.”

            “What?”

            I manage to get my arms through the t-shirt, although it might be backwards. “I don’t know. He’s got a backhoe out there and he’s digging up the family plot. Looks like Jason’s grave.”

            Babs’ color drains away, turning a bit waxy, but she manages a hurried, “Well go stop him, or at least find out what the hell he’s doing.”

            I press a rushed kiss to her lips, eyes dipping to her phone glowing blue on the mattress, “You sure you’re okay?”

            She gives my shoulder a squeeze, shooing me towards the door, “I’m fine. It’s probably just a wrong number.”

            I’m not sure I entirely buy it, but the sound of the backhoe reversing and taking another chunk of earth with it sends me running out the door with a promise to talk later. I sprint from down the hallway, catching glimpses of Bruce deepening the trench in the cemetery as I pass the expansive windows, and by the time I burst from a side door into the driving rain, he’s jumping down from the seat.

            I run across the lawn barefoot, being pelted mercilessly by the September rain to the point that I’m soaked by the time I reach Bruce. He’s climbed down into the pit with a crowbar, and he’s covered from head to toe in mud and grime. He doesn’t even notice when I stop at the edge of the pit, he’s too focused on prying open Jason’s coffin.

            “Bruce!” I shout over the din of rain, earning only a brief glance over his shoulder before he’s wedging the bar into place, grunting under the effort of opening the box, “What the hell are you doing?”

            “I have to know for sure.” He hisses, wrenching the crowbar against that cherry mahogany coffin I haven’t seen since the funeral. It’s an arresting sight, seeing the wood splinter like it does.

            I scramble down into the pit with him when he pops the first hinge, and I grab at his shoulders roughly, “Bruce! Are you fucking insane? Stop it!”

            He growls, shoving an elbow back into my face so that he can resume his work. I slip and fall in the mud, landing on my rear with a surprised grunt as blood gushes from my throbbing nose. He’s never hit me like that, not outside of training, and I blink up at him for several moments in shock as he pops the third and forth hinge with a sickening crack.

            His grey eyes don’t even flicker to me when he hefts open the lid of the casket, and I carefully gather myself up, keeping my distance with a hand holding my nose gingerly. Blood is still flowing, hot and scarlet-black, down my chin and onto the mud below. I don’t want to see the body the emaciated and tattered body and I am sure Bruce has exposed, but I feel like I have to. I need to.

            I lean over the edge of the casket carefully, and there’s an abrupt tug of sickness at the sight of Jason’s body, still folded delicately into the satin, being doused by the storm’s fury. He looks like he could be sleeping, and for a moment, I am overwhelmed by the irrational urge to shake him awake. To grab his hand and see if it’s still warm. God, he looks so…alive.

            Bruce’s dark expression doesn’t change when he sees Jason’s corpse, and it certainly doesn’t change when he grasps the boy’s lapels and hoists his body up. A fist of anger and illness alike wedges itself beneath my sternum, and I’m about to lunge at Bruce to attack him when Jason’s hair slips from his head like a cap.

            I balk, stomach roiling for a brief moment before my mind recognizes that the hair is in fact a wig. The boy’s head lolls to the side unnaturally, and the sinking feeling of awareness settles over my shoulders heavily when Bruce tosses the corpse back into the casket with a hiss.

            “High-grade silicone. Simple parlor tricks.”

            I blink at him, trying to wrap my head around the words he is saying, “High grade…what do you mean parlor tricks? Where’s Jason’s body?”

            Bruce scowls, turning to climb out the pit, but I hear him growling over his shoulder, “Nowhere. He isn’t dead.”

            If words could have physical force, those ones would have knocked me over, but I somehow manage to scrabble up the muddy wall after Bruce, following him as he walks back to the house. I feel numb for several moments, unable to feel much of anything beside the strange awareness of Bruce as we stride into the house, dripping and muddy, and head for the cave. I follow the motion of his back, trying to comprehend his words.

            He isn’t dead.

            Jason isn’t dead.

            Jason is alive.

            I manage a stuttered, “You mean…Jason’s…” We tread down the stairs towards the drafty confines of the cave, leaving wet footprints and spots of mud as we go. Alfred would be thrilled.

            Bruce’s chin angles to me, brows lowered into something anguished and hateful all at once. “Yes. Jason is alive.”

            My throat tightens. The more he says it, the crazier it feels to deny it. Of course Jason’s alive. How he couldn’t he be? 

            “But…but how? When? How did you know?”

            Bruce paces away from me towards the lockers at the base of the stairs, tossing me a towel over his shoulder. I’d forgotten about my nose, still bleeding profusely, and I hold the towel to my face, watching as Bruce moves to the computer and begins clicking away.

            “I suspect that Ra’s had a hand in his resurrection. He always expressed guilt about Jason’s death, regret that he partnered with Joker in the first place…” He pauses, expression darkening, “And I’ve had my suspicions since the first time we saw Red Hood weeks ago. Last night only confirmed it.”

            I shake my head, “Wait, what? What does Red Hood have to do with Jason?”

            “Red Hood _is_ Jason.”

            I fall into a rolling chair at the computer, trying to absorb the sudden onslaught of information, but it just isn’t computing. I’m still caught on visions of Jason, alive and grown. Alive.

            “That’s not possible. Red Hood kills people. He’s running a crime syndicate.”

            Bruce taps at the computer, pulling up a DNA profile comparison that positively identifies Red Hood as Jason Todd. I stare at it dumbly, speechless as Bruce continues, “He wants vengeance, Dick. He told me so himself…and he’s seeking it through violence. He thinks he can control them by becoming one of them.”

            I sit in mute silence for a long moment, trying to reconcile the image of Jason with the coldblooded killer that Red Hood embodies. Jason had always been tenacious, but never bloodthirsty like that. Never so ruthless.

            But then I recall the surveillance tapes from the manor break-in. How he’d sauntered in like it was home, how he’d known exactly where to go and what to tamper with. How he’d gazed at the cameras arrogantly, in that way that only Jason could.

            It’s a cold moment when the truth finally clicks, and I press back into the seat, feeling sick to my stomach. “Oh my God.”

            “I had to be sure…had to be certain it was him and not someone playing mind games. But now that I have a DNA match and Jason’s body is missing, we know for sure.”

            I stare at the screen, the juxtaposed images of Jason and Hood, side by side, and I shake my head, frowning, “How did you get a DNA sample from Red Hood?”

            Bruce crosses his arms over his chest. “I received intel that he’d be at the docks last night, meeting Fallon to arrange a merger. I met him there and we exchanged…words.”

            I notice, for the first time since this whole thing began, that Bruce is sporting a rather swollen black eye and several abrasions along his face. Bruising has started spreading down one cheek bone to the jaw, where a steri-strip is holding a gash closed.

            I shake my head, pulling myself to a stand, “Wait, so you met with Red Hood without telling me?” I shrug, irritation burning a hot trail in my throat, “You just decided to fly solo?”

            “I don’t need a babysitter, Dick.”

            “That’s not the fucking point and you know it.” I scrub a hand over my face, scowling down at the bloodied towel. “We were supposed to be partners on this, Bruce, but you went behind my back and purposefully cut me out. You should’ve told me.”

            His jaw works for a moment, arrogance flashing like steel in those cold eyes, “I’m telling you now.”  

            “You could’ve been killed and no one would have known.”

            “I wasn’t.”

            “But you suspected it was Jason and said nothing to me? Not even a peep?” I growl in frustration, combing angry fingers through my hair, “I mean, fuck, Bruce you weren’t the only one who lost somebody when Jason died alright? I could’ve helped you. We could’ve brought him in together.”

            Bruce’s expression sharpens in anger, his mouth starting to open around an angry retort, but he stops himself with a grimace. His lips flatten into a narrow seam, and he looks away from me.

            The silence between us stretches for several moments, a cold bridge like ice spanning the distance, and eventually, Bruce drops his arms from their folded position and sighs. A fraction of the tension leaves his shoulders, like water melting from a glacier, and those eyes that were cold a moment ago become soft.

            He looks down, and in a display that I’ve only seen a few times in my entire life, he apologizes.

            “I’m sorry. I should have done things differently.”

            I don’t have the capacity to hold onto anger long, and I feel the frustration deflate from my chest, leaving only that hollow relief and dismay from the truth of Jason’s demise. I let my shoulders loosen, and I sigh, shaking my head, “I get it, Bruce, I do. I just…don’t cut me out. Not when it’s about Jason…okay?”

            Eyes like abalone shell flash to mine, and he nods curtly, dark brows drawn low. I don’t expect more of an acknowledgement, and I certainly don’t get one. He looks away from me again, back to the two images crowding the screen. We stare at the boy we once knew, and the man we never knew, for several moments in stillness. I try to image what he’ll look like now. What he’s thinking. What he thought when we didn’t come for him. When we failed him.

            My stomach bottoms out, and not for the first time, guilt curls a cold fist around my ribs.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Barbara_ **

****

The diner is a small joint, packed with gritty types and greasy workers fresh off third shift nursing coffee cups and sour expressions. It’s tucked into a seedy part of town between manufacturing plants, and the half-shattered neon sign flickering in the front window boasts the best apple fritters this side of Gotham Bay. The place itself is decked in typical fifties attire—chrome, checkers, and cheesy car posters. The food looks subpar, the waitresses old and wrinkled, but at least it’s a change from the storm outside.

            I wheel inside and am immediately surrounded with the smell of greasy burgers and cigarette smoke. The waitress who greets me is a gal somewhere in her fifties with thin lips and dramatic blue eyeshadow. Her name tag reads Donna, and she lifts a toothpick thin eyebrow at my chair, before turning on a heel and leading me to a table wordlessly. I ignore the eyes of the patrons watching me, most dispassionate, some openly curious, and attempt to be civil when I order the famous apple fritter. I receive a lukewarm cup of coffee, and I sit with it between my palms, waiting for my date.

            I hadn’t expected the text this morning, least of all from someone who I thought I’d never speak to again, and it passes through my thoughts again that I’m being stupid. I should’ve waited and brought Dick with me. Better yet, I shouldn’t have come at all. For all I know, this could be a trap. I could be in danger.

            But it’s Jason.

            Admittedly, a Jason I thought was dead up until a few weeks ago, but it’s still him. He may be riding under a different flag now, but he’s still that boy I knew so many years ago. Granted, I’m not entirely sure how he’s back, and I’m even more disturbed that he’s contacted me personally, but I can’t refuse an opportunity to have my questions answered. I’m too curious.

            I take a sip of the coffee, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste of a brew that’s been sitting too long, and I consider again why I haven’t told Dick or Bruce about my realizations. When Red Hood first appeared weeks ago, I had done some digging and I’d uncovered a few hints as to his identity. Although I wasn’t sure, I’d been suspicious enough that I should’ve said something. But something stopped me.

            Whether it was reluctance to dig up old skeletons or some twisted selfishness, I’m not sure…but they won’t be happy with me. And I really can’t blame them.

            “Coffee. Black, please.”

            I look up from the mug of coffee I’ve been staring into, surprised to find a man sliding into the chair across from me with a motorcycle helmet under one arm. He sets the helmet down, shucking a black leather jacket and draping it over the back of his chair. It takes a few seconds of him getting comfortable before his eyes flash up to mine, and I realize abruptly that the man is in fact Jason.

            He looks older than I expected an eighteen-year-old version of him to be, and I sit quite stricken for a moment. His hair is longer than it was last time I saw him, but still trimmed neatly. A new lock of white fringes the edge of his hairline. His jaw has filled out, his brows frowning darkly, his mouth set harder. A hooked scar I don’t recognize cuts one his cheekbones sharply. Even sitting, I can tell he’s much taller than he was five years ago, and I trace the planes of his face in disbelief for several moments.

            I can’t describe the tumult of feelings battering for control in my chest. Shock, relief, grief, joy. So many things I could never have prepared myself for.

        Jason accepts the coffee mug when it comes, tipping back in his chair languidly and arching a brow at me. “You look surprised, Babs.”

        I blink, taking a swig of the bitter coffee to ground me. It helps a little after the experience of seeing a dead man suddenly alive. “You look…different.”

        He gives a half smile, dumping four packets of sugar into his coffee. “Coming back from the dead will do that.”

        “No, I mean you look…older.” He lifts a brow, and I smile gently, “You look good, Jay. You’re taller than I thought you’d be.”

        Jason chuckles, and it still surprises me how deep his voice is when he smirks and says, “I’m sure Dick will be thrilled to know I’m taller than he is. He always liked to lord that over me.”

        A moment of silence passes, and the waitress brings two orders of apple fritters to our table. Jason addresses the lady by name casually, and I assume he comes here ofteb when she calls him ‘sugar’ and tells him she’ll bring his extra whipped cream by in a few minutes.

        I start cutting the fritter into smaller pieces, still skeptical of eating anything from a joint like this, but Jason has already started eating hastily. I try to be surreptitious watching him, but he’s just so…big. Last time I saw him he was just a kid, barely thirteen and very proud of his puny muscles. Now, he’s a full-grown man with arms that look like they could crush my skull if they wanted to. It’s all a bit jarring, and I look away from him to avoid giving myself mental whiplash.

       A moment more of eating passes before I hear Jason sit back in his chair, having cleaned his plate, and he sighs. “Do they know yet?”

       I lift a brow, “That you’re alive?” He waves a hand as if that’s a response, and I lift a shoulder, “I’m not really sure, but they definitely suspect. Bruce had the backhoe out in the family plot this morning. Checking your coffin probably.”

       He humphs, gaze flashing dubiously, “So, I assume Dick and Bruce don’t know you’re here.”

       “No.”

      “They won’t like that you’re meeting me without them.”

       I look up, finding eyes like verdant watching me levelly. My chest tightens, and I lift my chin, “No, but I’m not a child and I certainly don’t need to be treated like one. I can still act independently, thank you.”

        His eyes dip to my wheelchair momentarily, softening, “That’s not what I meant.”

        I stare at him, debating whether I should just leave. He’s making no moves to explain himself, and he’s doing a damn fine job in making me feel even guiltier for leaving Dick out of this. God, I should’ve told him. He’s going to be so upset with me.

        I sigh, crossing my arms over my chest, “Look, not telling them was a choice I made because I wanted to know why you contacted me specifically. So if you’re going to tell me something, you might want to get on it, because they’re going to notice I’m gone soon.”

        Jason arches a brow, but he’s otherwise unfazed by my curt words. He takes a slow sip of coffee, green eyes watching me over the rim. Eventually, he lowers the mug, and frowns.

       “Alright, fair enough. I’ll cut to the chase. I wanted to ask you if you’d like to be there when I kill him.”

       I blink, feeling like I’ve completely missed some hidden conversation we were evidently have, and my gaze narrows, “Kill who?”

      Jason sighs, looking mildly irritated that I’m not catching on quicker. “Joker. I’m going to the kill the Joker and I’m asking if you’d like to be there. To watch, or help. Whichever suits your fancy.”

       My blood chills a couple degrees thinking about the clown, still sitting in a cell somewhere deep in Arkham, and I try to ignore the phantom pain that runs through my now paralyzed legs. His name often resurfaces ghost feelings in my legs, a residual effect from when he took them from me that night years back.

       My expression flattens into something cold and dark, and I force my hands to remain still on the tabletop. I’ve never been particularly proud, but I am certainly not above hiding how much Joker affects me. I still feel the ripples from what he did, how he used me.

       “Why would I want to do that?”

        Jason’s features are outwardly relaxed, but his eyes tighten into something cold when he gestures from my chair to the sloping scar on his cheek. I recognize it as a J, warped by scarring, but a J nonetheless. I have a similar mark on me, but it’s easily hidden beneath clothing.

        “He took something from us both, Barbara. My life, your legs.” _And something else._ Green eyes like ash stare into me, and I hear the unspoken words louder than if he’d shouted them.

         I meet his gaze evenly, but my heart is beating rapidly beneath my breastbone. I’m thinking about what he took from me. Everything he took from me, and now I see, from Jason.

         “So you’re going to kill him? That’s the point of all this—getting to Joker?”

          Jason looks down to the table, and I watch as his fingertips trace a crack in the checkerboard, “That’s one of the reasons, but the rest are my own crusade. Joker is…a stepping stone. A big one.”

          I frown, trying to settle the war in my own head that’s waging. “We don’t kill, Jason. You know that, or at least you used to.”

          Brows like ink lower into a scowl, and he crosses his arms over his chest tightly. “I used to know a lot of things, but dying changes things, Babs. It changed _me_. Changed how I view things.” His jaw works for a moment, and I recognize the familiar wrinkle in his brow from when he was a boy. “Bruce’s mission to save Gotham will never come to fruition as long as he follows his antiquated moral code. He will keep catching them and they will keep escaping to murder and inflict torture on countless innocents. Bruce knows this, he always known it, but he’s never been willing to change. Never been willing to sacrifice himself to make anything lasting happen.”

          I feel my hands fist on the tabletop, and I glare, “Bruce has given everything to Gotham, Jason.”

          “And yet Joker is still alive! He’s still going on killing sprees, still raping and stealing and living like everything’s one big fucking joke, even after all he’s done to our family. Bruce hasn’t done anything to stop him.”

           I frown, “He’s put him in prison, where he belongs.”

           Jason gives an acerbic chuckle, bitterness laced in his words like ice, “Where he’ll sit, living off three square meals and free cable until he breaks out again. Meanwhile, you and I are left to limp along after what he did, what he _took_. No justice. No vengeance.”

           “Come on, Babs,” he leans forward, expression abruptly urgent and fierce. He looks younger like this, more like himself, and my heart presses into my throat thinking how much he’s changed., “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about killing him in a million different ways. I know you have, because that’s what I’ve been doing for the past five years. Don’t you want to make him suffer for what he did to us? We finally have the chance to make it real.”  
            My chest tightens painfully, and for a moment, I have to focus on just breathing to avoid the tears that are suddenly threatening to fall. He’s right. I have thought about killing Joker in every way possible. Mutilating him until he’s nothing but a heap of flesh, humiliating him, debilitating him, torturing him…and now that the chance is in front of me, offered like a present wrapped in a bow, I’m dangerously close to accepting it.

       And I know that I shouldn’t.

       I swallow with difficulty, trying to deflect the conversation away from myself for a moment. Anything to staunch the burning in my eyes and the fluttering in my stomach. “And what about your other crusade Jason? I’ve been monitoring your movements closely. You’re taking down the kingpins alright, but you’re not just killing them—you’re replacing them. How is that justice to you?”

        His eyes shutter behind something hard and impenetrable, and he tips back into the seat again, crossing his arms, “I’m doing what has to be done.”

        “Becoming a criminal?”

        “If that’s what it takes to stop men like Black Mask and Mulroney from preying on kids and the weak, then yes. I become a criminal. I direct drug trafficking and arms dealing to those who know better. I control the flow of goods and I reduce crime in the process.”

        I see a flash of surveillance tape in my mind, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop a grimace. “And the killing, Jason? How do you rationalize killing like you do?”

        Jason’s expression never falters, but his eyes certainly waver a moment. The younger version of him, so carefully hidden, mirrors for just a moment in those clear green eyes before it fades away suddenly, and he scowls.

       “You know as well as I do that some people shouldn’t be alive. There’s no reform, no change, for people like that. Just extended heartbreak. I’m only shortening the process.”

       God, he sounds so angry, so harsh compared to the Jason who had laughed with Dick and I five years ago in the cave. We’d been like siblings, and I had treasured watching him grow and become stronger, kinder, braver with age. But this man staring back at me with Jason’s eyes, is different. He’s hard and broken and foreign to me. So foreign that it makes me want to kill Joker even more for making him so.

       We’ve reached a stalemate in the conversation, and we stare at each other for a long moment, both waiting for answers that will never come. I can see him asking me again and again with bottle green eyes to join him in his crusade for revenge.

       The problem is, I desperately want to say yes.

        It takes all I have just to sigh and lift a shoulder. “I can’t give you an answer yet, Jay. I need to think about it.”

        He nods, expression sedate when he unfolds his arms and downs the rest of his coffee. I’m not surprised when he grabs his jacket and pushes it on quietly, tucking that motorcycle helmet under his arm again as he stands. I watch him toss a wad of cash on the table, preparing to leave, and my heart damn near breaks when he stops at my chair leans down to press a kiss to my hair.

         One of his hands finds mine, squeezing it tightly, and his voice sounds rough when he murmurs, “It was good to see you, Babs. Really good.”

         I give his hand an answering squeeze, saddened by the man’s callouses marking his palm, “You too, Jay. I’ll text you when I have an answer for you.” He starts to leave, and I grab his hand one more time, catching his eyes when he turns back to me briefly, “Don’t go dying again, Todd. I like having you around.”

         His mouth curls into a smirking smile, one that looks familiar and warm, and he nods lightly, “I’ll try.”  

 

 

         I make it home an hour later after having the cabbie drive me around the city for a bit. Gotham isn’t particularly pretty, not with the hard lines of its architecture and the even harder lines of its people, but it’s gritty and real and refreshing. The ebb and flow of the city is therapeutic, almost numbing in the constant movement, and I find that I need it this morning. It takes my mind off of Jay, and more importantly, off of having to tell Dick.

          When I’m left sitting in my wheelchair in the driveway, staring up at the expansive breadth of the manor, I feel a sliver of dread feather down my spine. The rain has stopped, but the clouds are still grey, and I feel the coolness of the morning like a physical weight on me. I keep seeing Jason’s green eyes, very much alive, in my thoughts. Angry, vengeful, alive.

          Alive.

          And I didn’t tell Dick about it. Not two weeks ago, not yesterday, not this morning. I didn’t even hesitate in lying to him. God, he’s going to be so hurt. What the fuck was I thinking?

          I eventually work up the courage to wheel inside, and I begin searching the hallways for signs of Bruce and Dick. I pass by the guest bedroom where we stayed last night, see the covers still folded back and rumpled. Dick’s bedroom is empty, untouched and pristine. The dining room, kitchen, and sitting room are all empty. The library is vacant.

          That leaves one place.

          I move to the cave silently, taking the elevator behind library’s southernmost bookcase down to the subterranean level where I work most often when I’m at the manor. I’m instantly surrounded by the smells of calcium water, damp stone, and bat guano. The hum of computer machinery and white-blue lights, bats shuffling their wings and water rushing through hidden caverns, moves like a heartbeat against my ear, and it’s hard not to be soothed by the familiarity of this place. I practically grew up here.

          I move further inside, down a long ramp Bruce made after I was paralyzed, into the central area of the cave, and I find both of the men sitting at the computer console, hunched over their own work. It’s Dick who looks up first, his expression harried and tight, and I feel guilt like a heavy fist hit my chest when his features wash with relief. He stands and moves down the steps quickly, coming to fold me into a heavy-armed, too tight embrace.

          “God, where were you? Something…something big’s happened.”

          He’s damp under my hands still, and he smells like earth and copper. I notice vaguely that his shirt is stained dark with blood, and a quick glance at his bruised nose tells me that he and Bruce probably had it out. My chest tightens thinking that I’m about to make his morning that much worse.

          He withdraws after a moment, blue eyes like robin’s eggshells, and he frowns at me, “Where did you go? I was worried.”

          I blink, trying to find a good way to say that I just met his dead brother for breakfast. I struggle for words a moment and eventually settle on a hedging, “I…it was a last minute breakfast meeting.”

          “Well you could have texted, Babs.” He pauses, his eyes flicking over his shoulder at Bruce’s stoic figure, and his voice drops to a murmur, “I was…I didn’t know where you were and I really…I really could have used you Babs. It’s…it’s Jason…he’s…”

            He trails off as a hand scrubs through his hair, eyes so very pale with grief and confusion that I almost consider not telling him at all. But holding off will only make the knife twist worse when I have to confess later. It’s better to get it all out now, even if it makes me feel like a bitch in the process. He deserves that much from me.

            I inhale a deep sigh, steeling myself against my cowardice. “Dick…I know. I know about Jason.”

            Eyes like cobalt flash to mine, tightening. “What?”

            I sigh again, this time moving a bit further away from the computer console. I gesture to a stool in front of a work station, and to my surprise, Dick takes a seat silently and levels me with a steady gaze. He waits for me to speak patiently, but I can see the questions in the way he perches atop the stool like a cat, poised to leap into action at any moment.

            It takes a moment more of thinking to phrase my thoughts correctly, but I eventually manage a somewhat adequate response, albeit a very direct one.

            “I met with Jason this morning, Dick.”

            In my periphery, I see Bruce’s head tilt back to us, but it’s really Dick’s expression that’s the most arresting. It folds in on itself, his inky black brows lowering, and I can already see the betrayal bleeding through his eyes in the way he looks at me.

            He shakes his head, “You met with _Jason_ this morning? _Our_ Jason?”

            I nod, trying to be stronger than I feel, but God I kind of want to cry. Saying it out loud, that I met with Jason, just makes me want to cry over it with someone. Unfortunately, Dick would be that someone, and I’ve gone and ruined everything.

            “I…I haven’t been honest with you, Dick. Not entirely at least.” His eyes are closing off from me, going behind that wall of self-defense when something becomes too painful, and I struggle to continue explaining. “When Red Hood first appeared, I did some digging and I found some clues that made me suspect he might be Jason. But…I thought that my theory was unfeasible for obvious reasons. Even when I was almost sure, I didn’t want to bring it up because I thought it would make things…too painful. I needed to wait. I needed to be sure.”

            His expression is hard now, and his voice is sharp like the edge of a blade, “So this morning, the wrong number…you lied to me? It was Jason?”

            “I wanted to know why he contacted me specifically, why he wanted to meet.”

            “But you lied to me.” He pushes to a stand, pushing two hands through his already disordered hair in frustration, “You actually sat there and lied to my face, without even flinching. And about Jason, of all things? Babs, I…”

            “Dick, I know, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I lied. But I knew you wouldn’t let me go alone if I told you.”

            He scoffs, voice biting and cool, “You mean I’d try to stop you from meeting with him since he’s decided to kill? That, hell, I might want to go with you to meet my dead brother?”

            “He wouldn’t have showed up if I brought you.”

            Dick scowls, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, “Now you sound like _him_.”

            “I was just trying to do my job, Dick. Wrongly, maybe…but I was trying.”

            “No, what you were trying to do was be Batgirl again.”

            His comment hits a bit too close to home, and we both know it the moment the cave hushes and his eyes widen slightly. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, “I didn’t mean that.”

            “Yes, you did.”

He stares at me, looking apologetic and yet resigned, and I have to hide the burn that scathes across me knowing he’s right. I feel pressure start to prickle at the backs of my eyes, the self-pitying kind of tears threatening to make themselves known, and I look down at my lap to hide the moisture swimming in my vision.

            “Look, I’ll apologize for lying to you. For cutting you out…but I won’t apologize for meeting with Jason, and I certainly won’t apologize for being myself.”

            “I don’t want you to, I just…” He looks away from me, figure cutting a sharp shadow in the flood lighting of the cave. His brow wrinkles, and I hate how his posture bleeds betrayal, near reeks of bitterness, when soft blue eyes sweep to me and he shakes his head, “I mean, I expected this kind of thing from Bruce, but from you?”

            My fingers twist in my lap absently, and I feel my jaw clench, “I know.”

            “You could have been hurt, Babs. Jason…this man who he is now, is unpredictable. He could’ve hurt you. I wouldn’t even have known where to start looking if you turned up missing.”

            “He didn’t want to hurt me.”

            “He could have.”

            “But he didn’t. He just wanted to talk.”

            I look up, find his arms crossed over his chest stubbornly, but his eyes are soft. Worried. Hurt. But at least not as angry as before. He combs a hand through his hair again, expression weary and sedate. God, he looks tired. So tired. I hate how it pulls at his shoulders, makes his eyes sadder, the lines at his brows deeper.

            Eventually, the silence stretches so long that Dick moves back to the stool and sits. His voice is worn when it addresses me again, this time softly. “He’s my brother, Barbara…you should have told me.”

            “I know.”

            It’s an apology in its own way, as weak as it is, but I see Dick’s shoulders loosen after a moment of silence. His eyes, always like a July afternoon, are a shade of brine seawater when he looks at me again. Forgiveness has always been one of Dick’s greatest strengths, but I’m always surprised when I receive it. Every time I feel unworthy, and yet every time he gives it.

He inhales a short sigh, picking at a wayward string at the hem of his shirt absently. “So, how is he?”

            “He’s…” I hesitate, tilt my head sadly, “He’s tall.”

            Dick’s mouth tips in a slight smile, but his eyes are studying me intensely, “Does he look…healthy?”

            I smile, feeling that Alfred’s legacy of mothering lives on through Dick the strongest, although he’d never admit it. “Yeah, he looks healthy. Pale and sarcastic, but healthy.”

            “And his…how’s his mind? After the Lazarus Pit…”

            Bruce is listening carefully at the edge of the conversation, his head angled towards us, and it burns me a bit knowing that I have to tell him the truth about Jason. Specifically, about Jason’s convictions regarding Bruce.

            “He’s angry…hurt. He thinks we haven’t done enough for Gotham. That we’re not…willing to give Gotham what it needs.” I specifically lump us all in together, but I tell by the slight flinch from Bruce that he knows I’m talking about him.

            Dick nods, and I see his throat work around a swallow, “Does he blame us for his death?”

            “I don’t know,” I answer honestly, but I know by Dick’s expression that it’s not enough. “I don’t think even Jason knows who he blames. He’s tangled up in his own crusade, his hatred, his pain…he’s lost, Dick, but he’s convinced himself that doing what he is doing is the only way to help people.”

            He nods again, expression reflective and soft when he murmurs, “So there’s still some good in him.”

            “Yes, there’s still good in him.” However deeply buried.

            “He told me he wanted vengeance. What did he mean by that?”

            Bruce’s voice interrupts our quiet bubble of conversation from the console, and we both look up to find him watching us with a glowering expression. His eyes press on me heavily, and I have a hard time meeting them for fear he’ll see how shaken I am. I was hoping I would have more time to consider how I was going to answer Jason, or at least how much I was going to tell Bruce.

            But when I glance to Dick and find eyes like summer sky waiting for me to lie to him again, I know that I can’t lie. I have to tell him what Jason is planning, even if it kills me in the process. Even if I want to help him exact his revenge, I can’t help him murder someone. No matter how appealing the idea, I still believe in Bruce’s moral code. I believe in good and bad. It’s the one solid structure I have holding me up, and if it’s called into question, then where does leave me?

            “He wants to kill the Joker…” I hesitate, feel eyes like slate pushing me to say the whole truth, and I look down to my fingers laced in my lap, “And he asked me if I wanted to help him.”

            Bruce’s expression hardens in my periphery, brows furrowed, “Do you?”

            “Want to help him?” Silence answers me, and I’m forced to swallow a lump pressing hard into my vocal chords.

            “Yes. I want to help him.”

            My voice is paper thin, and I’m immensely grateful when Dick’s hand finds one of mine in my lap, and his fingers thread with mine. His palm is warm on mine, grounding, and abruptly I feel those same damn tears threatening to fall again. I let a few escape unchecked, but they don’t go unnoticed. It’s Dick who eventually crouches down in the silence between the three of us and folds me into his arms protectively.

            “I’m so sorry, Babs.”

            He holds me like that for a few minutes, fingertips warm as they trace circles on my back, and he murmurs apologies in my ears. A thousand whispered promises of love and sorrow and protection pass from his lips, and I hold onto them tightly. I hadn’t realized I was so rattled by Jason’s proposal, but I see now that’s it taken me back to those first few months after the attack. When all I smelled was grease paint and all I heard were laughs. When I was weak and angry and alone.

            Except this time, I have Dick. And he keeps telling me, over and over and over again, that he’s not going anywhere.

            For once, I believe him.  


	5. Chapter 5

**_Jason_ **

           

            I chew a mouthful of sandwich hastily, trying to remind myself to taste what I’m eating. It’s hot inside the warehouse, even this far removed from the kilns we use to prep the materials, and I swipe a hand across my forehead to dispel the sweat dripping from my hairline. The air is heavy and damp with the smell of plastics, acrid metals, and soldering, but I’ve managed to find a somewhat quiet section of the warehouse to eat.

            I’m joined by a few coworkers, all tucking into homemade sandwiches and tuna wraps quietly, eyes distant as they scroll through phones or text wives. We’re all smeared in grease and varying levels of grime, sweating our asses off, but lunch break makes lambs of us all. We’re tired and missing home already.

            My thoughts today are occupied by my recent encounter with Babs, and I glance down at my phone absently, half-expecting to see the screen light up with her response. Or rather, with a response from Bruce. I have no doubt she’ll have spilled the beans to Dick and Bruce the moment she got home, because she still possesses a conscience, and they’ll all be plotting a way to bring me in mercifully. As painlessly as possible. Dick will rally for confronting me head on with a peace talk, Babs will advise waiting for me to make a move on my own…Bruce will want to lure me into a trap, because he prefers control over chance.

            I’m not taking any chances though.

            My contact in Black Mask’s inner circle is secure, and I’ve been slowly pushing him to his brink in our little turf war. Just enough to make him antsy. Enough to make him consider hiring the Joker to take me out. One word from me, and my contact will drop a few well-placed suggestions. My men in Arkham will make sure Joker gets out easily enough, and when that happens, I’ll kill two birds with one stone. Well, I’ll kill two birds and I’ll catch a third.

            I only wish Barbara would be here with me to help. I think it would be cathartic to her, watching Joker die. Therapeutic. But I know better.

            I offered Babs the opportunity to kill Joker with me because I thought it was fair, and even I’m not heartless enough to take someone’s revenge from them, but I doubt she’ll accept. She still believes too strongly in Bruce’s doctrine. I saw it when she defended him at the diner on Saturday, and I have to admit, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed? Yes. But not surprised.

            I knew I would have to do this alone…but facing that reality is a bit different than knowing, isn’t it?

            “So Trevor, what’s your story?”

            I look up from my sandwich, realizing that the man nearest to me has asked me something. It takes a moment to remember his name, especially past the coating of soot and grease lining his skin, but it comes easily enough. Danny. Mid-thirties, brown eyes, warm smile. He works a few stations down from mine, but he’s the friendliest of the bunch. We’ve talked a few times before and he’s generally tolerable.

            I shrug, answering around a mouthful of turkey and swiss, “Not much to tell.”

            He nods sedately, but continues, “You from around these parts?”

            “Southside. Crime Alley.”

            What would’ve appalled most upper crust folks doesn’t faze Danny an iota, probably because we’re both street trash, and he just smiles faintly. “My ma’s from Southside. Spend any time in Deluca’s growin’ up?”

            A dilapidated community center run for street kids flashes through my memory, and I have an image of swiping the donation jar out front as a seven-year-old. Mom needed her fix, and we needed supper.

            “Yeah, I went a few times. Can’t pass up free Sunday dinners.”

            Danny smiles, as if remembering a similar childhood, and sets his sandwich down with a grunt. “My ma used to take me and my sister there every Sunday for that. We probably saw each other and didn’t even know it.”

            I humph, “Probably.”

            “So what about your folks? Still around?”

            I shake my head, rolling up my finished paper bag lunch and tossing it to the trashcan a few feet away. “Nah. We parted ways a while back.”

            “Rough family, huh?”

            I think about the bruises I still have from Bruce beating the shit out of me a few nights ago, and then about my drug addict mom strung out on a bathroom floor when I just ten, and I lift a caustic brow. “Yeah, you could say that. We didn’t get along.”

            Danny nods, taking a swig of his water, before looking out at the kilns burning across the factory floor, “I get that. My dad was a real piece of work.” His gaze goes distant for a moment, thinking about a traumatic childhood probably similar to my own, before he returns to himself and frowns at me. “So you parted ways with your folks…why here? Why not college?”

            I tip back against the support beam at my back, crossing my arms over my chest, “I prefer…hands on work.”

            “Bright kid like you?”   

            I chuckle, trying to remember the last time someone called me bright. Asshole, monster, and shithead are more my typical handles, but I appreciate the sentiment. I shake my head, and lift a shoulder, “Just haven’t found the right program of study yet, I guess.”

            Danny lifts a brow, hooking a thumb at my backpack leaning against my thigh, “I see you read a lot of books. The brainy type too.”

            I smile, “Well I never said I was illiterate.”

            Danny laughs heartily, “I’m just sayin’, Trevor. Smarts like yours can get you far in life. Certainly farther than this place.”

            I shake my head with a smirk, brushing a hand through my hair. It feels dirty from grease and soot. “Now you sound like my dad.”

            He lifts both hands in a sign of surrender, eyes warm even as he laughs, “Alright, alright. I’ll stop preaching to the choir.”

            We lapse into silence for a few more minutes, drinking until our water bottles are empty and the sweat has started to slow. Eventually though, a tone buzzes from the mounted wall clock, and we all gather our things silently. We slip back on our gloves and aprons, and like toy soldiers, we move back to our stations to resume our work.

            Danny bumps my shoulder when we part ways, making some comment about the god-awful heat, and I laugh. It occurs to me when he turns away that I’ve made a friend, and for some reason, the thought makes my chest feel tight and cold for the rest of the day. I don’t have time or space for friends, not when so much is at stake. Besides, I’m not even sure if I’ll be alive after the next few days. I guess that’s up to Bruce, and we all know how that worked out last time.

            When the bell chimes releasing first shift to the streets again, I leave without saying goodbye.

 

**_Dick_ **

 

            His apartment is probably in one of the worst parts of town. Half the surrounding buildings are foreclosed, and the other half are trapped firmly beneath the thumbs of slum lords. I know the area well, mostly because it’s at the edge of Gotham and Bludhaven, and Bruce and I used to run into each other a lot more than desired. It was back in our non-speaking days, and this patch of slum was a bit like a child being pulled back and forth between divorced parents.

            Now, we patrol it together most often.

            Part of me thinks that’s why Jason chose this place to set up shop, because it has a history of contention, but it’s probably because he’s most comfortable here. He was never at home in the atmosphere of luxury that permeated the manor. And if there’s one thing I know about Jason, it’s that he wants home. This is as close as he can get nowadays.

            I dip inside the apartment through a loose window latch, unsurprised when I dodge a few booby traps designed to decapitate me. Jason has always been predictable in his paranoia though. He had his bedroom armed for an attack as a ten-year-old, and that’s before he died and plunged headlong off the deep-end.

            I take a moment to survey the barren space when I disarm the last trap, and it’s a bit like looking at a prisoner’s cell. The bed is made crisply in grey sheets and a black comforter. One pillow laid flat. He has a bedside table sporting a singular lamp and a stack of rumpled books. No decoration clutters the walls, and the kitchen is bare save a table and one chair.

            I tread back to the bedroom, gravitating towards the books. I flip through them absently, warmed and pained all at once when I remember Jason’s fondness for reading. It was a trait he viewed as softness, so he kept it hidden, but it wasn’t uncommon to find him perched in the rafters with Plato, Homer, Poe, or Machiavelli resting on his knees. Bruce loved to spoil him with first editions and signed copies of thick volumes I had always hated, but Jason adored. Reading had been their bridge to one another. Something sacred they used to whisper about in hushed tones when we crowded into the library with scones and tea.

            I trace a fingertip along the spine of the volumes. Whitman, Shakespeare, Keats. He’s grown soft in his age.

            “Figured you’d turn up one day or another.”

            I replace the book with as much ease as I can muster, and I turn with my hands already raised slightly. I expected him to start on the offensive, and he hasn’t disappointed. He’s standing in the entry to the bedroom with a backpack slung over his shoulder, his other hand wrapped tightly around a .45 Springfield currently aimed at my face. His eyes are intensely focused, and even past the grease smudged on his features, I can see a deadly glare curling his mouth.

            I had tried to prepare myself for seeing him again, but imagining him doesn’t hold a candle to actually seeing him in the flesh. He’s tall, just like Babs said. Taller than me. His bones have shifted into a man’s features, his muscles lengthened, his gait straightened into something lethal. His hair is a little longer than last time I saw him, and he’s gained a shock of white at his hairline—a side effect of the Pit I’m sure. But his eyes are still that bottle green, bright and intense.  

            “You weren’t easy to track down.”

            Jason keeps the gun levelled, his eyes staring at me intently down the sight, “That was intentional.”

            I purse my lips, glancing around the apartment with forced ease. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

            His expression doesn’t waver for a moment, but he cocks his head slightly, “Did you bring anyone with you?”

            “You mean Bruce?” He lifts a brow as if to say _no shit sherlock_ , and I shake my head, “No. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

            I stare into the barrel for a few more moments as Jason deliberates shooting me or not, but eventually his hand lowers, and he tucks the gun back into his waistband fluidly. He drops his backpack at his feet with a sigh, smirking as he combs a hand through his hair.   
            “First Bruce, then Babs, and now you. All lying to each other, aren’t you?” He shakes his head, gaze only half joking when it lands on me again, “And _I’m_ the black sheep of the family.”  

            I frown, “That’s not true, Jason.”

            He arches an indignant brow, striding away from me towards the bathroom, “Save it, Dickie-bird. We all know B replaced me before I was even cold in the grave.”

            I flinch, trying to think of a way to refute that. I want to tell him about Bruce’s suffering. How he didn’t talk to me for months on end, and when he did, it was never about what happened. I want to tell him that Tim had to persist in asking for sixth months before Bruce would let him be Robin, and even then, it was never the same. Never could be after what happened.

            But I remain silent instead. I listen to the run of water from the bathroom, the faint sound of clothes being dropped on broken tile, and I hold my tongue. Jason eventually emerges in a new shirt and sweats absent of soot stains, a towel draped around his neck. He’s washed the black smudges from his face, and I can now see the scar Barbara was talking about warping the skin of his cheek. It’s a haunting image I wish I hadn’t already pictured a thousand times.

            Jason catches my gaze as he passes by, tossing the soiled towel into a pile by the closet. “If you came to talk, you should get on it, Dick. I’ve got other things to do tonight, and you’re cutting into my me-time.”

            I open my mouth to say something, but the words fall dry and useless on my tongue. Jason makes a face of exasperation, but he doesn’t say anything further when he treads into the kitchen and begins rummaging around in his fridge. He pulls out a jug of milk, popping the cap off and taking several deep swigs.

            When I just stand there, mute as a puppet, Jason’s brows lift, “Well? If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” He replaces the cap on the jug and tucks it back into the fridge with a scowl, “And lose the mask if you’re planning on getting emotional. I can’t take you seriously like that.”

            I frown, but I take off the domino obligingly. Jason has moved to lean against the counter with legs crossed in front of him, and I watch in abject resignation when he withdraws a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

            “Since when did you start smoking?”

            Jason takes a draw on the cigarette slowly, one brow lifted arrogantly, “Since I decided to. It’s a good stress reliever.”

            I frown darkly, “It’s cancer in a stick.”

            His mouth flattens into a mutinous line as he releases a breath of smoke, “I already died once, Dick. I’m not exactly afraid of doing it twice.”

            “You should be.”

            Jason’s eyes narrow, and he lowers the cigarette slightly. It streams a trail of smoke up from his hand, and it occurs to me how much older he looks than the bright-eyed thirteen-year-old we lost. He looks harried and tired. Wizened beyond his years.

           “If you came here to lecture me, you can leave.” He shakes his head, cool green eyes flat and steady, “I don’t need the brotherly pep talks anymore, but thanks.”

             I flinch a little bit at the acid in his tone, mostly because it reminds me just how much time we’ve lost, and I try to hide the flash of hurt when I look down at the smudged linoleum and shuffle my feet. “I just came to talk, Jay.”

            We remain silent for a moment, listening the sounds of city beyond us—car horns, raised voices, and feet. The persistent tapping of rain has joined the commotion, sounding a bit like clicking tongues just beyond the window panes.

            Jason shifts, and I lift my eyes to catch him take another inhale of the cigarette. He taps the ashes in the kitchen sink, eyes shadowed and dark, “Just a social call, huh?”

            “Mostly.”

            His eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

            When the silence between us stretches further, and we’ve resorted to simply staring at one another, I take the chair at the small kitchen table and tip back slightly. I want to ask him a million questions, mostly how he is, why he didn’t tell me he was alive, why he’s on this insane crusade…but I settle on being benign out of cowardice.

            “I see you’re reading the classics still.”

            Jason’s gaze flickers to the darkened bedroom, “That surprises you?”

            I smile slightly, “No. You always loved to read, I just didn’t know if…” I trail off, unsure how to coast over the whole undead situation without sounding too blasé.

            “Dying changed that?” Jason supplies the rest of my thought with a half-quirked smile, and it’s the easy kind of expression I’ve been waiting for. I feel myself relaxing a bit even as he shakes his head and smudges out the cigarette in an ashtray on the counter. “Nah, the Lazarus Pit took plenty, but it left that much at least. Wasn’t always that way though.”

            I lift a brow in question, sensing a story coming on, and surprisingly, Jason obliges me with a half shrug, “You really want to hear the five-year sob story? It’s depressing.” I nod, settling deeper into my chair. I shouldn’t be surprised when he sighs and begins fluidly. He’s always loved to tell stories. That much hasn’t changed.

            “The first year was…rough.”

            He reaches into the cabinet at his back as he talks, withdrawing two cans of what looks like chef Boyardee ravioli. I shake my head when he offers me one. He shrugs, pops the lid of the other can, and slides onto the counter behind him. He dangles his feet off, looking very much the teenager, as he begins spooning out cold ravioli greedily.

            “I spent a few months scrounging around the mountains after the Pit, surviving off twigs and small game. I didn’t know who I was, where I came from, anything. I was just…” His eyes dip to mine briefly, tightening around the corners, “Blank. I was completely empty.”

            I cross my arms over my chest, feeling the ache blossom like a knife wound somewhere beneath my breastbone. I remember the first few months after the funeral. The house was so quiet and we were all so fragile. Babs had once told me it was like the manor was made of glass that first year. One tap and we’d all shatter.

            To think, Jason was surviving in the woods for months on end, and we had thought he was dead in the family cemetery.

            “When did you remember?”

            Jason digs around the can absently, spooning up a few more ravioli, but his expression is taut, strained. “It took a year or so for things to start coming back. I remembered you first, actually.”

            I look up from the grain of the table I had been tracing, “Me?”

            He nods, gaze casting away from mine. His shoulders are tight again. “Yep. I remembered some snot-nosed kid calling me Jay-bird. I spent a few months mumbling it over and over in the asylum until it started to make sense.”

            “Asylum?”

            Jason sets the can down beside him, now empty, leaning back into the cabinets and pushing a hand through his untidy hair. “Some villagers caught me after a few months in the woods. Granted, I don’t blame them—kid wandering around the forest, naked, eating rats raw. They should’ve been concerned.” His expression twists in a smile that looks too pained to be genuine, “Took me to the local hospital for treatment and the doctors decided I was probably insane, feral, or both. So, I spent the next nine months in a nutty bin.”

            My throat tightens again. I try to not to think about what he must have endured, but it’s near impossible not to picture the electroshock therapies, the heavy medications, the isolation chambers he probably underwent. Nine months of hell that ultimately deprived him of the care he needed. Nine months that may have actually robbed him of his sanity.

  
            We’ve fallen silent again, listening to the rain and the faint tap of a wall clock from the bathroom, but we don’t have to say anything to understand. We both spent plenty of time checking perps into Arkham as kids and teenagers. We know how bad places like that can be, how they can twist the good into the cruel and make the impossible seem only natural. I wonder how much of Jason’s mission can be attributed to the same.

            I don’t know what to say that adequately encompasses my feelings, so I settle on a simple, “I’m sorry, Jay.”

            Eyes like spring leaves jump to mine, dark brows lowered in a frown. He shakes his head, looks down. “It’s okay. I got my revenge. Burned the place to the ground actually.” A t my expression, his mouth pulls into a smile and he chuckles, “I let the patients escape. Give me _some_ credit.”

            I arch a brow and purse my lips, “Oh right, I keep forgetting you’re _not_ the same guy who executed the entire Mulroney family.”

            Jason’s expression twitches, his mouth shifting into a slight frown, but he remains otherwise unfazed. He just shrugs a shoulder, and answers simply, “Let the punishment suit the crime.”

            “I’m not even going to begin to explain how flawed that way of thinking is.”

            “Good. Because you’re here to talk, not to lecture, remember?”

            I see the edge of hardness in Jason’s gaze, the way he arches a singular black brow, and I don’t push him further. On another day, I might be arguing more about the morality of murder, but I don’t want to push my luck any more than I already have.

            I inhale a levelling breath, scrubbing a hand over my jaw, “Fine. We’ll leave the murdering thing untouched. For now.” Jason lifts a surly brow, and it’s an expression so very similar to his younger self that I have to suppress a quaver in my resolve when I prod, “Finish your story.”

            “Ah, finally learning to let other people have a turn. Good job, Dickie.” Jason’s mouth tips into a smirk, and it’s hard not to smile back when it feels almost like I’m talking to my best friend again.

            We used to tease each other when we patrolled together, seeing who could craft the best insult, the most underhanded slight. It often culminated in a heated argument or wrestling match, but we always patched things up with a hug or a joy ride in the Batmobile. Usually accompanied by ice cream and loud music.

            It’s the dynamic that kept us going when Bruce was intolerable. What made us family when the world was determined to tear us apart. It’s what makes this whole conversation seem so natural, even when it should be impossible.

            Jason, still smirking, resumes his story without much more prodding on my part. He stops a few times to eat something more, and we end up sitting adjacent from each other with beers. I buckle eventually, relaxing into the kitchen chair as time goes on. I slip off my boots, and at some point, I accept a proffered twinkie and munch on it absently. Jason slips off the counter a few times during his story, gesturing to the aid the stories’ drama.

            It feels natural that we should find ourselves in a dingy kitchen hashing out five years of life together, almost like destiny, but it’s still a little shocking to hear the saga of Jason’s “dead” years. He tells me about his time with the League of Assassins, his training under Talia and the world’s top hitmen, his crusades in distant cities as he took over crime syndicates and transformed them. Years eating from dumpsters had turned into enough money to buy canned tuna. Then enough money to move, and move he had. Romania, Vietnam, Guam, Pakistan, Haiti. Then Gotham when the time felt right.

            I don’t say anything when he mentions killing people casually, nor when he blatantly tells me that he’s going to kill Joker. The truth is, I understand his views, because not too many years ago, I’d shared them. Granted, I hadn’t succeeded in carrying them out, but there was definitely a time when I thought Bruce wasn’t hard enough on Gotham’s underbelly. I’d told him so after Jay’s death, and we’d not spoken for six months over my poorly chosen words.

            When I’d finally come back to apologize, Bruce and I had talked for hours about moral principles and why he refused to kill. We’d discussed our parents’ murders openly for the first time since I was a boy, and I’d finally understood him. Finally learned to feel much the same as he did.

            But I understand Jason. I understand him, because I _was_ him.

            The alcohol makes us both quieter, warmer than we were a couple hours ago, and I note absently that the sun has dipped behind the buildings of Gotham. The apartment is washed in dim yellow fluorescence, making the outer world seem pitch black, but I can still see the paths of rain drops cutting over the window panes. Occasionally, a flash of lightning highlights the monoliths beyond the glass, and I trace their shapes until I’ve memorized them.

            It’s when the 8:15 L train rattles by a block away from us that I realize we’ve sunk into silence again, both content to stare out the window with mostly empty, lukewarm beers in hand. It’s a warm, comfortable stillness brought on by familiarity with one another, but it’s also a little bittersweet. Last time I saw Jason he was a boy, and yet now we’re sharing a beer and talking about how many people he’s killed. Time’s have changed.

            People have changed.

            Jason takes the final mouthful of his beer with a frown, and we both feel the shift in atmosphere when he tosses the empty bottle into the trash and turns to face me again. His expression is sedate, but more serious now. It’s lost the dreamlike quality that reminiscing gave us.

            “I guess now’s the part where you tell me why I’m wrong, huh?”

            I swirl the last drops of liquid in my bottle absently, hesitant to shatter the peace between us. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

            A beat of stillness. “You agree with me?”

           “No.”

           “Are you going to try to stop me?”

           I swirl the bottle a few more times, feeling those green eyes like knives pressing into my skin for an answer. When I look up, our gazes meet unbrooked and we stare for a few moments. I study him again, because I just can’t seem to fully reconcile the man with the boy, and I feel a sigh issue from me before I can really stop it.

           “No.”

           His expression shifts into a frown, and he crosses his arms over his chest, “Then what do you want, Dick? Why did you really come here?”

           It’s on the tip of my tongue to let out a weak _I don’t know_ because it would be the most accurate, but I know it wouldn’t be enough for Jay. So I settle for a bone-deep sigh, the kind that comes from your toes and bleeds exhaustion from your pores, and I shrug.

           “I wanted to see you. To make sure you were…”

           His mouth flattens, “Behaving?”

           “Real. I wanted to make sure you were real.” I swallow, hating that my throat feels unbearably thick when I try to continue again, “When you died, I…I didn’t know who I was without you, Jay. I lost myself to grief for a while, became someone else. Someone capable of terrible things.”  

           Jay’s eyes are quiet when they meet mine again, more sage than bottle green now, and his mouth is bracketed by a soft frown. “I know. You tried to kill Joker.”

          “Yes. I tried.”

          “And Bruce stopped you.”

          I trace a swirl in the table’s grain, hating how raw his voice sounds. “Yes, he stopped me. He pulled me back from the edge.”

          A heavy beat of silence, a few drawn breaths constricted by emotion. Jason is looking down at his feet now, brows furrowed deep. “You let him talk you out of it.”

          I hesitate, trying to be gentle. God, I don’t want to scare him away. “Bruce did what he thought was best.”   

          His eyes, tart with pain, jump to me and his mouth twists into a grimace. “His best isn’t enough. It will never _be_ enough. You know that.”

          I search for words, feeling at a loss, “He loved you, Jason.”

          He gives a harsh laugh, more scowl than smile, eyes like cutting jade. It’s a heart-rending feeling when he scoffs, and I can see the little boy of so many years ago strong in his gaze, “He has a funny way of showing it, don’t you think? Letting my murderer run free, replacing me the moment I’m gone, forgetting me for his new family.”

          Jason shakes his head, and his voice burns like a bitter pill, “Let’s face it, Dick. He erased street-rat Todd from his life as fast as he could and moved onto the upgraded model. I mean, shit, I can’t really blame him. Who really wants to think about the kid you let die in a warehouse explosion after he was brutalized for a few days? Much easier to let the memories die with the regrets, right?”

           I push to a stand, chest so tight I feel like my lungs might burst. “That isn’t fair, Jason. He never forgot you.”

            His expression edges to near venomous, his mouth curling in a snarl, “When’s the last time he talked about me then? Do the others even know I existed? Did they even know that I used to be Robin or was that erased too?”

            “Stop it.”

             His voice has edged into a shout, and he doesn’t stop when he faces me toe to toe and growls, “And you! God, you’re such a fucking coward, Dick. Still bowing to Bruce’s antiquated morals, even when you know you should fight them. Even when the people you love are repeatedly hurt by them.”

            I take a threatening step forward, feeling as if I’m close to a very violent edge, “I said stop it, Jason!”

            “When Babs was shot and raped, did you even try to avenge her, or did you just roll over for Bruce again?”

            I don’t have time to stop myself before I lunge for him with a growl, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as I shove him hard into the counter at his back. He lets out a hiss of pain, but his resigned expression tells me he expected this kind of outburst. He was goading me into it, and the fact that I fell for it makes me even angrier.

            I hold him against the counter for a moment, knuckles white and teeth barred in a snarl, before I force myself to take a step back. I didn’t come here to fight, and I certainly don’t want to end the night like this. I drop my hands from his shirt front, willing the rage to wash away. It takes several moments of deep breathing for my vision to quit flashing red, and when it does, I can finally see Jason clearly.

             His expression is guarded, but those bottle green eyes are washed in pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. He looks like a boy now, unsure and afraid at heart, and a dip of guilt tugs at my stomach. He’s still a child in many ways, and yet here I am, behaving just like Bruce would. Treating him like he’s on a level playing field when he’s coming from a disadvantage.

             God, he’s my brother and I’m treating him like an enemy.

              I inhale a deep sigh, and like I would have done five years ago, I step in and enfold Jason in a hug. He doesn’t respond immediately, his frame stiff and unfamiliar for several moments, but eventually, his shoulders loosen and his arms squeeze around my torso. He resigns himself to the hug with a taut sigh, and it’s a bittersweet moment of memory colliding with reality.

             The old Jason would’ve smelled like coffee and library books. This one smells like factory grease and cigarette smoke. He’s bigger than my old Jason, and he certainly doesn’t fit under my shoulder like he used to, but some things haven’t changed. Some things never will.

              I squeeze him tighter, “I’m sorry, Jason.”

              He breathes a sigh into my shoulder, voice barely a murmur now. “I know.”

              Eventually we step back from one another and stand in silence for a moment. The anger has faded away, leaving only that strange feeling of déjà vu and lost things, but it’s better than I expected. When I pull back on my boots and my mask, preparing to leave out the window I came in through, Jason pulls me back into a brief hug.

              It feels like a last embrace, and the thought scares me.

              He murmurs a goodbye and I ask him to be safe. He lifts a shoulder and promises nothing, but he nods when I tell him to call me if he needs anything. I give his shoulder a squeeze, because I still feel like I’ve dreamt him up somehow, and then I slip out the window into the night.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**_Bruce_ **

****

I tread up the stairs heavily, feeling the exhaustion from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. My body aches from hours spent punishing myself in the gym and on patrols, anything to distract myself from my own thoughts, but it hasn’t been enough. I’ve been doing what my mother once called mental gymnastics—something I evidently share with my late father—and it’s been draining me more than any amount of training can.

            I roll my neck, kneading my fingers along the muscles at the base of my skull to stem the headache that’s blossomed. The shower downstairs helped a bit, but it’s not enough to completely loosen the muscles. I shuffle into my bedroom quietly, and I leave the lights off out of habit when I stop at the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and pop a few pain pills. I wash it down with a handful of water, and like I’ve done for so many nights, I settle myself heavily on the bench seat in front of my windows.

            It’s where I do most of my deep thinking outside of the cave. I’ve been following the same routine since I was a teenager—whenever the world was too overwhelming or an emotion too deep-seated, I would come here to look out at the gardens and the open bay beyond. Alfred would find me here as a child, having fallen asleep reflecting, and he’d cover me with a blanket and leave me for the night. We never spoke of it, but I was always glad he never asked me further.

            Sitting here now in a pair of sweats and a hoodie, tucked against the window, breathing circles of fog onto the glass, I feel very much like a boy again. Confused, angry…afraid.

            I trace a finger through the mist on the glass, drawing a figure 8 absently as I survey the outer world beyond. The rain has turned to sleet, ice mixing with rain in a deadly combination, but it sure looks beautiful. The faint moonlight catches the slanting water like grey crystals, the wind pressing hands against the bay water to create rough currents and frothed waves. The naked trees in the garden wave slender limbs back and forth, and the sleet washes everything in miniature warped mirrors. A million places of light and darkness, shadow and moon, just beyond cool glass.

            Jason and Dick used to join me on nights like these, and we’d watch the rain together from my window from beneath an afghan. I think the rain scared them both sometimes, because they’d tiptoe into my room and crawl onto the seat next to me with wary eyes. We never said anything, but we’d draw pictures in our breath on the glass, and we’d trace the rivers of water outside with fingers. It was quiet moments like those that Jason would drop his guard and lean into my side. I used to hold him tight, maybe too tight, because God I was afraid to lose him, and I just wanted to remember how he felt in my arms before he’d draw back again.

            I close my eyes for a moment, trying to remember that feeling, but it’s a hard to capture ghost, and the memory of Jason as he is now is much easier to recall.

            Thinking of Red Hood brings all sorts of feelings to the front of my mind, and I feel my headache push back against the meds stubbornly when I try to think about it too much. I’m a man who enjoys absolutes and certainties. I like things that are real and definable and controllable. Jason, how I feel about him now, how he feels about me…it’s all grey and twisted. Hard to define, impossible to control. I can’t predict much of anything, and that makes me both uncomfortable and afraid.

            I can recognize that I was never a perfect father to Jason, and even though I try, I’m still an imperfect father to my other sons. I’m absent more than I’m home, I’m distant more than I’m warm, and I often struggle to connect on things that should come easily. It’s not a lack of desire. It’s a lack of experience and training, frankly, and it’s taken me years to confront that weakness in myself.

            Dick faced the brunt of my immaturity as a father, and we had our own fallings out over my failings, but we had time to rebuild. We mended bridges and found new ways. I learned to relax, slowly, and Dick learned to forgive what I could not change. It’s what makes us such a good partnership.

            But Jason and I…

            We never had that chance. He was taken from me before I ever got the chance to apologize for my shortcomings, and ultimately, it was my fault. I should have never allowed him near Joker. I knew Jason was ambitious, rebellious, and stubborn. He would try to take Joker down, at whatever cost to himself. I knew this about Jason, because I raised him and I loved him. But I ignored it because he needed to be Robin as much as I needed to be Batman.

            And now, he’s dedicated his life to avenging his own death. Dedicated himself to making sure he does what I won’t, and that decision is what ultimately leads us to this point.

            He’s going to kill Joker, and I’m not sure I want to stop him.

            I hear the snitch of my door behind me, and I look over my shoulder in time to see Dick tipping his head inside slightly. He catches sight of me on the bench seat, and looking a bit relieved, he steps inside and closes the bedroom door behind him. He pads over to where I am quietly, and I pass him the quilted afghan when he settles down opposite me with his knees pulled into his chest. He pulls it around his shoulders with a soft sigh, and he stares out the window for a few moments.

            I study him silently, watching the rise of his shoulders as he breathes softly, trying to remember how long he’s had worry lines between his brows. His mouth is tipped into a frown, and his blue eyes are slated and hard. I feel my chest clench at the departure from his usual lightness, and it sets worry spiraling in my stomach to think how much he’s starting to look like me lately.

            “You alright?”

            Dick’s eyes sweep up to mine, hold for a minute, and then drop back to the afghan. He tucks it up under his chin tighter, brows furrowed. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just…it was a rough night.”

            I hum, tipping my head into the wall at my back. I trace the lines of the crown molding on the ceiling above me with my eyes. “A lot of those lately.”

            Dick is silent a moment, and it doesn’t surprise me when I feel my stomach tighten in apprehension at the pause. I know Dick, and I know that he doesn’t like to keep secrets. If he’s hesitating, he’s probably going to confess something.

            “I went to see Jason tonight.”

            I close my eyes briefly, let the flash of betrayal come and go like a wave, and I force understanding to wash over me instead. I knew this would happen. Dick and Jason were close, shared a bond like brothers, and death certainly never tempered that. I knew he would seek him out and find him. I just thought he might have told me beforehand.

            But then again, I doubt Jason would want to see me of all people right now.

            I open my eyes, find Dick watching me with tension bracketing his mouth, and I let out a soft sigh. “I knew you would.” I pause, look back out the window. The sleet is morphing into snow now—the heavy flaked kind that builds quickly. “How did it go?”

            Dick shifts, lifting an uncertain shoulder, “Better than I thought honestly. We…talked.”

            “How is he?”

            My voice sounds raw even to myself, and Dick must hear it because his voice becomes more gentle, as if he’s afraid he might break me.

            “He’s okay. He’s living in a bad part of town, but he has a job in a factory. Still reading, feeding himself alright. He looks healthy.”

            I frown, “And emotionally? Mentally?”

            Dick hesitates again, pain marking his brow when he shrugs, “He’s…well, not good. He’s still convinced that the only way to stop crime is to become a part of it, and he’s made it his personal mission to take down Joker. He’s angry.”

            I’ve resumed tracing the figure eight in the window fog, over and over and over. “With me.”

            “With everyone, I think. He feels like…we let him down by letting Joker live.”

            My hand stalls against the glass, and I let it drop to my lap when I look back at Dick with pain like daggers curling around my ribcage. “Maybe we did.”

            I lift a shoulder, and like I rarely do, I voice my inner thoughts. It feels better to have them aired tonight, rather than buried. I’m so tired of burying things. “Maybe he’s right, Dick. At least partially. Maybe some people just don’t deserve to live. Maybe Joker should’ve died.”

            His eyes tighten, “Maybe. But it’s never been our place to make that choice.”

            “But I could’ve. I could’ve made that choice to end it five years ago before he hurt anyone else. Barbara, the countless others he’s maimed and killed…I could’ve stopped it.”  

            Dick blinks, mouth pulling downwards into something like a glare, “That’s not fair, Bruce. You did what was right—what was _just_. Justice, not vengeance, remember? _You_ taught us all that.”

            I sigh, and the bone deep weariness rears its head again. It aches through my joints and my muscles, the ghost of something cold shivering down my spine. “Look, I’m not changing my stance. I’m not even apologizing for what I did or didn’t do, because I know it was the right thing. I’m just…”

         I pause, look back at the figure eight now fogged over again. Fat snowflakes drift by the window and press fingertips into the stone balcony. My eyes prickle.

         “Jason…he’s my son. I can’t describe to you the feeling…God, the feeling of losing a son and being unable to do what you want to. Being incapable of killing the son of a bitch that took him from me because I would never come back from it. Knowing that I did what I could, and yet…it’s still not enough. It can never _be_ enough.”

         I feel my hand curl into a fist of its own accord, my nails digging sharp semi-circles into my palm, “And now I have to try to explain why I didn’t give Jason what he deserved, why I failed him both as a father and a partner. I have to live and die with the decision I made five years ago, even if I still question it to this day.”

         I have to be strong, but God do I feel weak.

         We fall silent again, because words somehow don’t feel adequate to describe the vault of emotions that’s laying exposed between us. I’m not surprised when Dick gives a heavy sigh and scoots from his side of the bench to mine. He tucks himself next to me like he used to do as a boy, leaning into my side with the blanket still pulled up to his chin.

         Dick has always thrived off of touch, and coming from my background raised by a butler, we’ve certainly had our misses in how we show affection. I was never taught to be physically affectionate, so I used to be uncomfortable around touch. It made me feel awkward and vulnerable.

         But time and fatherhood change things seemingly elemental to a person, and I’ve grown to enjoy physical contact. There’s something unspoken in just leaning together like we are, speaking without having to use words, and I let myself relax into the embrace. Eventually, I put an arm over his shoulders, trying to remember again how he got so damn big, and I hold him tight.

         We stay this way for a long time, staring out the window together, admiring the hazy drift of snow and cutting waves of Gotham harbor below the garden. Gradually, the claws of worry loosen around my chest and I allow myself to cherish the moment. It isn’t often I get to relive the moments from when Dick was just a boy, and it’s hard to feel alone when he’s leaning his head on my shoulder.

          I suppose, even if the world is swallowed up and we somehow die tomorrow, I will still have this. I’ll have the moments when Jason knew I loved him to remember. I’ll have my boys to think about. And that’s enough.

          Eventually, Dick speaks again, in the kind of low tones that only three A.M conversations require, “You know, Bruce…whatever happens in the next few days, whether we stop Jason or let him do what he will…whatever we decide together…I just wanted you to know that I’m damn proud to be your son, and I’m really glad you decided to take a chance on us. All of us.”

           My throat tightens impossibly, and I feel Dick take a deep, steadying breath next to me. “I know that it hasn’t always been easy. We’ve certainly tried to drive you insane, and you could’ve kicked us to the curb for the trouble we’ve caused you. But you never did…and I…”

           He sniffs, and swipes at his cheeks with the heels of his palms, chuckling softly, “I just…I love you, old fart. I always will.” He shrugs, laughing quietly again, “I know, _feelings_ aren’t really your thing. I just…wanted you to know.”

           I shake my head, and I pretend for a moment that Dick isn’t almost thirty years old when I wrap him in a tight hug and whisper, “I love you too, son, and I am so incredibly proud of who you are.”

            He grabs ahold of the back of my hoodie, and his shoulders tense for a moment as he grips me tightly. I breathe him in, trying to memorize these little moments before they slip away, because they always do. Reality has to come back at some point.

            Eventually, he pulls back from me and wipes his eyes with the sleeves his sweatshirt discreetly. I don’t mention the tear stains on the shoulder of my hoodie, nor do I say anything when he leans back into my side. We sit in silence again, tucked together against the window pane, watching the snow cover the world in white. Washing it anew and making it sparkle under the moon beams cutting through clouds.

            It’s beautiful, and the image is almost enough to fill me with hope.

 

**_Jason_ **

 

             I guess I thought I’d feel differently than I do. Today of all days, I anticipated enthusiasm, impatience, anger, bloodlust…I tipped off my guys within Black Mask’s inner ring a couple days ago, and I was informed that they were going to retrieve him from Arkham this morning. A glance at my phone reveals a confirmation text from a restricted number. He’ll be out soon.

             I was prepared to wake up and face the sunshine, knowing Joker has been released from Arkham, and in a few short hours, that he’ll be my hostage. He’ll make his next move in a spectacular display of narcissism, self-indulgence, and preening to get Bruce’s attention. Except I’ll be the one to catch him this time.

            And then we can have a little… _chat_ before the Bat drops by.

            What I had not anticipated was the dread that would damn near paralyze me. I woke this morning in a twist of sweat-soaked sheets, shivering under the hands of a full-blown panic attack from the night terrors. I’d been terrorized in my dreams by visions of Joker snatching me as a full-grown man, no longer thirteen, and using me like he had back then. I’d been so afraid in the dreams I hadn’t even fought him. I’d wept and screamed, and again, no one came.

            _We’ll have to let the big man know how good you were for Uncle J, now won’t we? I’m sure he’ll just_ die _when he hears how much fun we’ve been having together._

            It had been a full thirty minutes before my jaw would unclench, before my heart would even begin to slow, and even then, I was still shaky and clammy the rest of the morning. I’d decided that distracting myself was wise, and so I’d dressed for work and come in early.

_Did I ever tell you how much I enjoy babysitting for the Bat?_

            Standing at my station in the smith, wearing an apron with metal calipers in hand and grease staining my skin, I don’t feel any more composed than I did this morning. My hands are still unsteady, my skin still dashed with a cool sweat as I try to work, but even now, I can feel _him_ lurking like a shadow in the corner of my thoughts. His hands feel closer to my skin today, his mouth somehow more insistent against the ear of my thoughts. It’s as if he’s invaded my body again, and the thought makes me want to wretch and scream all at once.

            Fuck, I can’t do this. I can’t do this again.

            _Hush, hush little bird. I only want to have some fun. Don’t you want to have fun?_

            The pressure of a hand clapping against my shoulder startles me badly, and I drop the tools I was holding with a sharp inhale. The metal calipers skid against the cement, but I can’t retrieve them even if I want to. I remain paralyzed for a moment of irrational terror, frozen by the hand still gripping my shoulder. It’s only when Danny ducks into sight with an apologetic frown and retrieves the tool from the ground that I feel myself take a deeper breath.

            _Looks like daddy’s a little late, pumpkin. You sure we sent him the right address?_

            He lifts a brow at me, passing me back the calipers, “Look a little pale Trevor. You feelin’ okay?”

            I blink, force my hands to work again as I accept the tool. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I letting this get to my head so badly? I’ve killed men with my bare hands, murdered without thought, and yet now I’m losing my sanity over the idea of facing one measly clown?

            “Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Just…a headache.”

            _Which one hurts more? A or B? Forehand or backhand?_

            Danny nods slightly, but his brow wrinkles like he doesn’t quite find me convincing. “You sure Trevor? You’ve been actin’ funny all day.”

            _You know, at least the other boy wonder had some manners. But you? I’ll just have to teach you a little lesson._

            I scowl, turning away from him curtly, “I’m fine.”

            It’s when he pats my shoulder again with a faint _alright kid_ , that I feel the first cramps of nausea start to echo through my abdomen. My hands have started to tremble again, and I recognize the wash of adrenaline before it hits me fully. I’ve lived with myself long enough to know when a panic attack is coming, but it doesn’t ever prepare me for the reality of one. I need to get out of here before it really hits. Before I make a fool of myself.

            _Jingle bells, Batman smells…Robin’s been found dead!_

            I manage a mumbled excuse to the foreman about feeling ill before I’m striding towards the men’s bathroom on unsteady legs. My stomach has resigned itself to rejecting the bowl of cereal I had for breakfast outright, and it cramps violently when I burst into the bathroom and move straight for the handicapped stall at the end. I barely make it on my knees before I’m vomiting up cinnamon toast crunch and curdled milk.

            _Three days. You still think he’s coming for you, lamb chop?_

            The wave of nausea lasts several minutes until I’m reduced to dry heaving over the toilet bowl, but eventually there’s nothing left in me, and I collapse back onto the tile with ragged breaths. With the contents of my stomach evacuated, the nausea has left, but my heart is still racing against my ribcage like I’m running. I can feel sweat sliding in ribbons down my face, and I try to swipe it away with gruff hands.

            _Tell the big man I said hello…oh, and don’t forget to give him a big kiss from Uncle J._

            I’m shaking too much to be of any use, and so I find myself doing what I do when I’m alone at home and an attack hits me. I slump onto the floor with trembling limbs, panting as I press my cheek into the cool tile. It’s filthy and smells like weak lemon cleaner, but the chill of the tile is soothing. I force myself to inhale wobbling breaths, pressing my fingers flat to the floor to feel the resonance of the building beneath me. It helps a little to feel small like this, but only just a little.

            I can still feel grease paint and saliva on my skin.

            _So quiet? Have you finally given in? And here I thought—_

            The sound of the bathroom door swinging inwards is the only thing that jolts his voice to a stop in my head, but I don’t feel thankful. He’ll be back later, and this time, in person.

            There’s a faint rapping of knuckles against the door to my stall, followed by a tremulous, “Trevor? You okay, buddy?”

            I recognize Danny’s voice over the thunderous sound of my own labored breathing. I work for an even tone as I press my cheek harder into the tile, willing my limbs to stop shaking. “I-I’m fine.”

            _Tut tut, darling. Lying again. What would the big man say?_

            I see his boots hesitate at the stall door, shuffling in indecision. His sigh is loud against the echo of the bathroom tiles. “You don’t sound fine, Trevor.”

            I fold myself tighter into the fetal position, grinding my teeth against a hiss,

            “Just go away, please.”

            _Not a chance, boy wonder. You’ve still got some more manners to learn._

            I press my fists to my ears, grimacing. God, leave me alone. I just want to be alone.

            “Do you need me to talk to Joe about you leaving early?”

            I’ve levered into a seating position to glare at the stall door, and my voice doesn’t sound near as threatening as I want it to when I let out a wavering, “I said I was fine, Danny. Get. Out.”

            “Just at least lemme call someone for you, man. You got any friends who can—”

            “I said fuck off!”

            _Oh that’s no way to treat a friend, now is it boy blunder?_

            I push to an abrupt stand as the irritation becomes white hot, and I shove the stall door open with a fist. It bumps into Danny sharply, but he doesn’t seem to notice when he takes in my wobbling figure with wide eyes.

            “Jesus Christ, Trevor. You look terrible.”

            He reaches out a hand to steady me when I bauble, the rush of blood from standing so quickly making my head spin for a brief, disorienting moment. I jerk away from him with a hiss, leaning heavily into the stall when I glare at him, “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

            “Alright. No touching.” Danny lifts both hands with a frown, but his eyes are still infuriatingly gentle—like he’s afraid of scaring me. Of breaking me.

            I scowl, attempting to push past him roughly, but it’s a weak attempt at best. My legs are still wobbly, and I can feel the chill sweat still tracing rivers down my cheeks and neck. The shaking in my hands is easing slightly, but I’m completely sapped from the adrenaline rush. How I plan on fighting Joker tonight after this…

            God, I’m fucking a mess. I can’t even carry out my revenge fantasy without having a panic attack. What am I going to do when I face Joker in the flesh in a few hours? Will I freeze like this? Curl into a ball and weep? Or will I just beat him to death without even waiting for Batman to show up? Will I even have any control over myself?

            Why am I even doing this again? What if it destroys me?

            I weave slightly as I trudge for the bathroom door, and this time, I’m too tired to tell Danny to fuck off when he grabs my elbow to support me. I catch sight of my expression, waxen and ghostly in the mirrors when we pass them, and it’s enough to make me look down at my feet as we quietly leave. I don’t bother looking up as Danny guides me out of the building onto the sidewalk outside.

            He flags down a taxi and presses a twenty into my hand when I slump into the backseat weakly. I don’t have the energy to thank him, nor do I have the fortitude, but he gives a brief nod like he understands and shuts the door deftly. I mumble my address to the driver—it’s twenty minutes away in good traffic—and I let myself close my eyes for a moment as I lay across the backseats.

            I try to picture what I was so sure of last night. The confidence and strength I had, the rage when I faced Joker in my most violent fantasies, but I feel more afraid than anything now. I feel small and weak and very much like a thirteen-year-old again. Easy to overpower with the right kind of force. Easy to manipulate and hurt. Easy to forget, too.

            Why? Why am I doing this again?

            The confusion crowding my lungs eventually grows from helplessness to betrayal, hot and molten. It morphs into rage and sadness and weakness in turns, a twisted ball of yarn I could never hope to untangle, but when the taxi slows in front of my apartment, my heart has slowed. My hands are still.

            And I’m finally remembering why I’m doing this.

            It’s for Jason Todd. The little boy that I was, murdered and abandoned. I’m doing this for him, because no one else will, and he deserves at least that much.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**_Joker_ **

****

The shrill keen of a scream presses against my ears like a kiss, and I feel a smile curling my lips. God, it’s been ages since I’ve heard a good scream, and it makes me downright flushed with hunger. I’ve always been a bit of a cook myself, but boy have I missed playing with my food in Arkham.

            I dangle the gas can from two fingers, letting it slosh onto the huddle of people tied on the floor of the van below. Black Mask and his goons are at the center of the group, surrounded by a few passersby who looked especially juicy. One of them lets out a terrified squeal when I drop the can into their midst, and I can’t help a little giggle as I watch the can empty itself into a puddle.

            “You’re fucking crazy, you know that!”

            “Oh, darling, there was never any doubt of that.”

            Black Mask glares up from the van floor vengefully, mouth curled as he spits out gasoline and squirms against the ropes. I can’t wait to see what he looks like once he’s been barbequed.

            “I should’ve never hired you.”

            I smirk, seating myself at the edge so I can dangle my feet over them, “Well…probably not, seeing as how I’m about to burn you alive on national television and all.” I turn to the helicopter that’s now circling us with a spotlight trained on me, giving it a little wave, “Say hello to the nice folks at home everybody!”

            I spread my arms to greet the 7:30 traffic gridlocked around us on Gotham’s central bridge, pleased to see that most people are leaning out their windows and watching with wide eyes. Traffic being what it is in Gotham, the police are relegated to their helicopters or to motorcycle units. Their presence is pitifully small, and certainly not concerning to me right now. I’ve got a barbeque to host, and I’m _really_ hoping the guest of honor will show up any minute.

            I withdraw a lighter from my pocket, weighing it in my hands as I flick it on and off. Click. Click. Click. The meat below me watches the action with rapt attention, and I can’t help but chuckle when they flinch every time the flame jumps.

            “What are you waiting for, Joker! A fucking invitation?”

            “Oh no, Mister Mask. You see, I’m having a little potluck, and I’m just waiting for a friend to arrive.” I glance at my watch, waving the lighter over the opening into the van again. I swish my feet, tapping my heels against metal, “He’s usually quite punctual.”

            A few more minutes pass, and the police presence grows heavier. Three helicopters circle us now, lights trained on me, following my every motion. He’s never this late when there’s this much fun to be had. If it’s one thing the Bat hates, it’s fun, and boy does he like to spoil mine.

            Click. Click. Click.

            I sigh heavily, flicking the lighter a few more times against the heel of my palm, watching the night sky for the telltale flick of a grappling hook, the swish of black fabric, the—

            _Thud._

            Pleasure flushes through my system like an aphrodisiac, strong and heady, and I turn fully expecting to see a figure clad in kevlar and oozing disapproval from boot to cowl.

            Instead, I’m rather surprised to see the very man I was hired to kill standing with arms crossed over his chest.  

I’ll give the kid credit. He’s got hutzpah. A flare for the dramatic that I can appreciate, and I _love_ what he’s done with the hood. Very…biker-gang meets special ops commando. Granted, I’m more of a classics kind of guy myself. The red hood getup looked much sharper in my day, but he’s doing his best I suppose.

            Kids these days.  

            I quirk a smile, propping one foot up on the edge of the van again, “Well, you’re either stupid or incredibly brave. Shouldn’t you be avoiding the man hired to kill you?”

            “From where I’m standing, it looks like your contract’s been cancelled.”

            I can almost hear the arrogance in that deep voice, and it very much reminds me of playing with a younger Batman, fifteen years past.

            “You’re probably right.” I chuckle, feeling a surge of renewed vigor push through my veins when the lighter wobbles in my fingers and nearly falls. One of the women below lets out a scream that would put a cat to shame.

            Red Hood doesn’t react to the display, and it’s a bit disappointing that he doesn’t even flinch. Batman would’ve had me hogtied by now. I sigh, flicking the lighter on and off again. Click. Click. Click.

            “You see, I was hoping a friend of mine might show up tonight for my little barbeque. I admit, I’m a bit disappointed that he’s so late.”

            Red Hood shakes his head ruefully, “For being the clown prince of crime, Joker, you sure are predictable.”

            Click. The lighter stills in my hand. “Oh?”

            “I can always count on you to put on a show for dear Batman, can’t I?” He takes a step forward, paces measured and layered with threat. “I knew the moment I got you out of Arkham it was only a matter of time before you tried to rekindle things between you and the Bat. I only had to wait and follow the news helicopters.”

             I laugh. God, this kid might not be the Bat, but he sure knows how to tell a tale. I like him.

            “You make it sound like this was all a part of _your_ plan.”

            Red Hood pauses, tilting his head in a way that reminds me of a crow examining roadkill. “Oh, it was.”

            Click. Click. Click.

            His posture reeks of confidence, the kind you can smell from a mile away, the kind that is just so damn fun to crush. It reminds me a bit of Batsy in his younger days, before he was going through Robins like tissue paper and therapists even faster. Those were the days, weren’t they? Two cats, fighting over a mouse. Boy, how we fought.

            But I suppose times have changed. And if the kid is right about anything, perhaps I am getting a little predictable. I’d blame it on age, but I’m really just out of practice. You know what they say though…like riding a bike?

            Click. Click. Click.

            I lift a brow when Red Hood stops a couple feet from me, smiling already. “Was this a part of your plan?”

            I drop the lighter.

            The van below me erupts into flames immediately, bathing us both in golden yellow light and the sounds of ear rending screams. Shivers of pleasure rush down my spine when I glance below and catch sight of the bodies writhing in the inferno.

            But my pleasure is short-lived.

            Arms like a vice grip around my ribs, jerking me upright roughly, and I see more than hear Red Hood’s response. A grapple line takes us above the fray even as flame retardant is dropped from a glossy, black plane above us. I laugh when the plane circles, and a familiar figure drops from the belly to the pavement near the van. There he is! The police converge on the steaming vehicle with frantic yelling and tears already being shed, swallowing up the image of the Bat.

          I watch the chaos unfold, because God it’s just so damn beautiful. I don’t note with great concern where we’re going, because it’s likely that Batman will be on our heels any moment. Besides, I kind of like this Red Hood’s style anyway, and I’m beginning to think we’ve met somewhere. He seems familiar, and I’m not sure how.

          A moment later Red Hood is plunging us beneath the waves of Gotham’s harbor, dragging us under the water to God knows where. I’m gifted with a mask after a few moments, supplied with oxygen, and I take it without question. I nearly laugh when Red Hood begins paddling us towards the shore, careful to stay below the surface in case the Bat is watching.

          He really _did_ have this all planned.

 

**_Jason_ **

 

            I’m spiraling.

            I can feel myself starting in on a tailspin, feel the velocity of my downfall as the inhibitions whistle past my ears at breakneck speed, but I can’t slow myself. I can’t make myself pull my parachute chord, even though I know I should. I’m going too fast, keeping this one too close to the chest. I need to distance myself.

            But I can’t. I won’t. And so, I lean into the slipstream.

            He’s smaller than I remember, more wire than brawn, and certainly less threatening than my memories make him seem. He’s currently rumpled on my floorboards, curled into a ball with eyes squinting closed and a strange macabre smile curling his lips. That greasepaint is smeared at his throat, but he’s still ghostly pale in the darkness of my apartment. His hair is a stringy shade of green akin to broccoli vomit, and it turns my stomach when he pushes a hand through it and peers up at me with eyes the color of coal.

            “I really feel like I know you from somewhere. Did we do time in Arkham together?”

            He arches both brows at me, panting shallowly from the last few strikes I dealt. The crowbar feels heavy, ironic, in my hands even as I stare down at his frame. He’s still grinning.

            “No, wait, lemme guess…same yoga class? Pilates?”

            I shake my head, testing the weight of the bar against my palms. It’s taking everything I have in me to ignore the deluge of memories trying to gain access, the flashes of pain and desperation, the screams of a child against empty walls.

_Skin on skin, mouth insistent, hands like needles, voice a viper against my ear. I just want to go home. I want to go home. I want home. I want—_

           “Or maybe…we used to be playmates!”

           I pull in a sharp breath, bringing the crowbar down hard against Joker’s shin. A crack rents the air, bringing reality cold and bleak back into dominance, and I force myself to grab hold of it tightly. If I let the memories too close, I know I’ll devolve into an attack. I’ll end up pushed against the wall, rocking back and forth as I crumble in on myself…and that’s the last thing I want right now.

           I dig the heel of my boot into his shin, leaning my weight on the bone until it pops again. Joker hisses through his teeth, gleaming like fangs in the half-light, but his eyes don’t waver from mine. He grins, licking his lips, “Oh-ho, I get it now! We parted ways bitterly, huh?”

            _Blue light from a distant cellphone, numbers tapped with cool fingers. “Shall we call daddy dearest, little Robin? Think he’ll come this time?”_

“You could say that.”

            Joker lifts a brow, pursing his lips in delighted suspense, “Oh really? Do tell.”

            I lower to a crouch, fighting against every instinct in my body that’s telling me to run. Those dark eyes are assessing me in an entirely too familiar way, gloved hands just itching to break loose of their bonds, and yet here I am getting on his level. Internally, I feel my control fissuring, feel the tailspin starting to tighten its circles, but I can’t break yet. It’s not time.

            _Bruce will come. He always comes. Right?_

            I press my trembling hand to my thigh and force a level tone, bolstered when I’m able to hide the quaver struggling to make its way to my voice. “I’m surprised you don’t remember me, Joker. A bit insulted actually.”

            Joker chuckles, tipping his chin to swipe a dribble of blood on the shoulder of his jacket, “To be completely honest, I am a bit too! Sure you’re not mistaking me for someone else, kid?”

_I can still taste his sweat on my tongue, still feel his hands covering my mouth and nose. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t—_

            How could I?

            I narrow him with a scowl, “You don’t see many other folks wearing face paint and molesting little boys, now do you?”

            His mouth puckers with shock for a brief moment, but the expression quickly fades into warm amusement. He makes a show of lifting both shoulders, dark eyes like gleaming marbles when they take me in anew. They look hungry now.

            “You got me there, Mr. Hood. Now I’m _really_ curious.” His eyes narrow, and he tilts his chin like a bird inspecting a worm. He leans in, almost close enough that he’s touching me. “Tell me. Who are you really?”

            I catch the odor of his breath, feel it brush against my exposed neck like a fatal kiss, and a fist of terror wraps around my throat unbidden. My heart thrums like a bird’s wings against my ribcage, so fast I start to feel like the poor organ might just give up, and I’m forced to lever away from Joker. I realize too late that my hands are shaking again, trembling like they’ve taken a dip in an ice bath, and it’s not hard to see the pleasure Joker derives from seeing my response to him.

_run. Run. RUN. RUN. RUN!_

            His eyes flick from my hands up to my face, and he levels me with a smug grin. “Bird boy? Is it really you?”

            I don’t answer. My voice is trapped in my throat like someone’s hands are constricting, tighter and tighter, but my posture is bleeding affirmation. I can feel the cower of a beaten man trying to bow my shoulders, feel the sobbing breaths of a panic attack starting to saw in and out of my chest. Blades of ice prickle along my spine like fingers dancing across my skin.

_You think daddy will mind if I give you a small parting gift? Just a little J from your dearest uncle. To remember me by!_

           Joker’s eyes are full of mirth now, a long overdue joke finally reaching its punchline, and he lets out a barking sort of laugh, surprised and delighted at once. “Well, isn’t this something. Boy wonder come to play again!”

           I want to tell him to shut up, to go fuck himself with the nearest blade or just run headlong off a convenient cliff, but I can’t manage a single word past the rhythm of my breath. I’m terrified of him, more than I ever wanted to be now, and I hate myself for it.

           Joker purses his lips and chuckles, “Oh you poor thing. I hope you don’t harbor any ill feelings towards me for the whole trying to blow you up thing. It wasn’t personal.”

           I stay frozen, halfway pushed into the wall at my back, halfway poised to attack again. But I know how weak I must look. I want to run, with every fiber of my being, I want to run. Avoiding the panic is like trying to swim out of a whirlpool—completely and utterly pointless. The terror is written all over me, carved into my limbs like brands, but I can’t hide it. There’s nowhere to hide. 

_You’re alone, Robin. No one is coming for you. No one is looking. I’m willing to bet they’ve already abandoned the search for you. But you already know that, don’t you?_

          I shudder visibly, fighting the urge to crouch and pull my knees into my chest. I feel exposed, and horribly, horribly small.

          Joker sees the tremble, his eyes catching the movement like a viper’s studying prey. His lips curl slowly, and he props himself up on an elbow, brows furrowed as he clucks his tongue. “Oh, come now, no need to be shy bird boy. We’re _well_ acquainted now, don’t you think?”

         God, just the way he looks at me. It’s like he’s imagining taking me again, peeling my clothes off me with his glossy eyes, dissecting me from inside out and then branding me anew. Three days of broken bones and dirty cellar floors. I have a distinct memory of my face pressed into a cement paving stone, crying out for him to just kill me past a dislocated jaw. I’d lost my fire after day two, and I’d been reduced to begging like a whore for scraps.

_“Please…please just kill me. I-I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do what you want. He’s not coming…he’s never coming…please, you’ve had your fun. Kill me.”_

        I feel a breath break past my gritted teeth, and I can’t be sure who I’m rebuking when I hiss, “Shut up.”

         Joker chuckles, licking his lips again as his eyes skate along me from stem to stern. “We should be celebrating! It’s a bit of a reunion after all.”

        This time I address him directly, my left hand tightening around the spans of the crowbar threateningly. “I said, shut up.”

       “I mean, granted,” he lifts a shoulder, pursing his lips, “I usually prefer my playmates a bit _younger_ …but I could make an exception for an old flame.”

       It’s somewhere around the word ‘exception’ that I feel all the trembling energy, the barely restrained anxiety, break through like a bullet through glass. I launch myself forward with enough force to knock Joker onto his back again, and his head makes a sickening thump against the floorboards. I don’t have much control over my actions, but I do register dimly that I’ve climbed on top of his chest and have begun striking him violently. My fists find any scrap of flesh that will allow me purchase and I tear savagely. I feel the slip of hot blood and crushing bone beneath my knuckles, like pumping an aphrodisiac directly into my veins.

_“I can’t do it anymore. Please…please let me go.”_

        He’s still laughing. Beneath the flow of blood, his lips are curled in a smile and his teeth glare up at me like a taunt. His lungs rattle beneath my knees, but he’s still laughing. Still winning. A growl slips past my lips when I grip his head by his hair on either side, and I bring it down hard against the floorboards. I repeat the action. Again. Again. Again. I don’t stop until the Joker has ceased laughing.

         When his figure is limp beneath my hands, I feel my limbs come back into focus. Like radio fuzz or television static, my hands prickle back to life, and with sensation and control, comes the inevitable waves of helpless panic. The attack I had been trying to hold off flares to life, a fire doused in gasoline, and I stumble away from Joker’s body without knowing if he’s alive or not.

          I could’ve killed him just now, and I don’t even know.

          All I know is surviving. I press my back into the wall, trembling as I curl into the floor beside the body, and I try to breathe. I press my nose into the filth of the floor, and I try to remember how to make my lungs expand, how to force blood to extend to my toes and then return to my heart. Back and forth. Again and again. Over and over.

          Dust motes and old wood and coppery blood. Creaking floors, greasepaint, and aching hands. Sirens outside cracked windows, footsteps on distant streets, dogs barking. Heavy breathing. A heart, beating too fast.

          I force myself to exist, and ultimately, the shaking subsides. With the worst of the attack having passed, I’m left weak and drained. I lay still for long moments, a puddle of aching muscles and nausea, and eventually I have the presence of mind to check the body. I stretch a hand out, pressing cold fingers to the skin of Joker’s throat. To my surprise, I feel a pulse pushing back against me, stubborn as ever.

          It’s just as well. Without him, there’s no reason for Bruce to even come.

          It takes great effort, but I finally manage to gather myself up from the floor. I take Joker’s unconscious form by his bound wrists, and I drag him to the closet. It’s the locking kind, thank God, and I stuff him into the corner before I flip the latch. When it’s closed, and the apartment is again silent, I’m more than a little bit ashamed to admit that I’m relieved.

          Even just removing Joker from my line of vision is a comfort, and the realization makes me itchy. Annoyed. Afraid.

          I remove the red helmet from my head without preamble, drawing in deep breaths of the wintery air. I close my eyes and press my back against the door, swiping my hands down my pantlegs to remove the blood from my fingers. I try to level myself, try to remember why I’m doing this again, but I just feel tired. So goddamn tired.

_I wanna go home. Please…please, Bruce. Don’t give up._

          I hear him before I see him. It’s the soft snitch of a window, the gentle rapport of boots on old floors that clues me in. I’m not in a hurry to return to the moment or face the next hell storm, but my eyes pull open of their own accord. I find the Bat himself, standing stark against the wall of my bedroom, hands loose at his sides. Snowflakes cling to his shoulders.

          We say nothing for a moment, content to stare at one another. I feel Bruce’s studying gaze taking me in, sense his hesitation like I feel my own. But eventually, he shifts, and I see his mouth bracket with familiar disapproval.

          “Jason.”

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a tough one folks, and it has a pretty desolate ending. I took a lot of inspiration for dialogue/story from the Red Hood plot line. But have no fear! More chapters are coming which deviate from the depressing story line into more redemptive waters. In the meantime, enjoy some good ole fashioned angst and know that everything works out in the end!

**_Bruce_ **

****

It’s strange seeing him again. I thought I’d be used to the idea of him being alive, but I’m not. I still haven’t quite replaced the image of his corpse with the grown man standing before me, and it’s hard to remember why I’m here. My first instinct is to step forward and pull him into my chest. I want to assure myself again and again that he’s real and I desperately, desperately want to apologize. I want to say a million things that I never could before.

            _God, I missed you. I love you. I’m sorry._

            But the words lose their momentum like carbonation left too long exposed, and they never find their way from me. I stare at him, trying to memorize every bit of him before the truce is broken.

Inevitably, the wind changes its course though, and I shift, trying to garner the strength I need to support us both through this.

            “Jason.”

            He lifts his chin, and I wish, not for the first time, that he wasn’t wearing the domino. His eyes were always so easy to read as a child. I now wonder if death and trauma have changed that particular trait.

            “You came.”

            I nod, not bothering to step deeper into the room. I don’t want to push him, not with the edge I can see dancing around his posture, a poisonous kind of energy that begs for violence. I don’t want that kind of confrontation, even though I know I’m a fool to think it can be avoided.

            Jason studies me intently for a moment more, and his mouth twists in dark humor when his voice rises again. “I’m surprised you even bothered honestly. I seem to remember you missing our last appointment.”

            I resist the urge to embrace the insult, to take it and use it as fuel, and I instead offer a sedate, “I know.”

            Jason tilts his head slightly, a humorless smile dancing at his lips in a way that makes my stomach tighten. “Oh, you _know_ , do you? Were you there in the warehouse when that piece of shit was torturing me for three days? Were you there when I begged, _begged_ , for you to come save me? I dunno, maybe I missed that part in between the rape and branding.”

         I flinch visibly at the verbiage, and I see Jason catches the motion before I can hide it. He shakes his head, and the bitter smile fades to a cold frown. “No. You don’t know a f _ucking thing_ , old man.”

          I shift my weight, trying to mitigate my response. He’s being purposefully blunt to get a reaction out of me, to harm me even. It’s his defense mechanism and I cannot let him use it against me. “Maybe not…but I tried, Jason. I failed…but I tried.”

          He gives a caustic laugh, pushing up from the wall at his back. He’s slightly taller than me when he stands straight, and I feel a tang of bitter sweetness batter against my ribcage when he looks down at me. I never thought I’d see him past puberty, let alone fully grown.

          “I know you tried, Bruce. That’s what you do best. You try. But it’s never enough is it? You’re not ever willing to go the extra mile, make the sacrifice to really win.”

           I frown, noting the feather of pain and irritation that has started climbing up my spine. “Is that what this is about? Winning?”

           “It’s about righting your wrongs—doing what you won’t.”

           I feel myself take a step deeper into the room, chest tight with unspent words, “You mean _killing_ people.”

            Jason lifts his chin and shrugs, “Maybe. If that’s what it takes to stop them.”

            “Stop them? You’re not stopping them, Jason…you’re joining them. You’re _becoming_ them.” I hesitate, work to draw in a breath that will make my tone softer. “This has to end tonight, Jason. All of it.”

            This time, he lets out a laugh that could be described as incredulous, but I can see that his fingers have started to tap against the hilt of the handgun at his hip. He’s jumpy, irritated, just waiting for me to spring the hair trigger he’s relying on.

            “You want me to _stop_? I’m doing more for this city than you’ve ever done!”

            I let the heat of my frustration close around my chest a bit more this time, and a frown pushes my mouth in a thin seam. “You’re losing yourself to revenge and hatred, and you know it. You’re blinded by your own pain, Jason.”

            “Am I? Because it sure as hell feels like I’m seeing clearly for the first time since I took up your little crusade.” His hands are in fists now, trembling with reserve energy. A threat, a promise. “What did you honestly expect, Bruce? I’d come back from the dead and want back into the cult? Did you think I didn’t notice how quickly you replaced me? How _easy_ it was for you to move on?”

            His words are like a well-aimed blade, dipping to the vital organs just beneath my ribs. “I didn’t replace you.”

            Another sharp laugh rents the air between us, shifting the rift even wider. I can see the pain and anger like handwriting scrawled across his features, mirroring my own. “Really? How long did it take for you to find a new Robin, huh? A week? A month?”

            I feel the scowl take hold of my features before I can control it, and I’m shifting forward, my hands tightening into painful fists. “Your death destroyed me, Jason. It broke me on a level I’d never experienced before, but life didn’t stop. I couldn’t make it stop. Not for you, not for me. I had to adapt.”

            Jason’s expression turns downright venomous, and he sneers at me. “Oh poor you. I feel bad, really. It must’ve been so hard mourning your dead son, surrounded by family and friends, resources and support. It’s a wonder you made it through at all.”

            My chest binds with something like grief, hot and familiar, twined with a new anger. The kind that smarts like lemon in a wound, reminding me that this…who Jason has become…is my fault. I led him here. And now I have to face the consequences.

            We stare at one another a moment more, waiting for the next shoe to drop. It’s Jason who eventually breaks the stalemate. He shakes his head, drawing a hand through his hair, posture braced and tense.

            “But you’re right about one thing, old man. This all ends tonight. No one knows that better than me.”

            I don’t know what I expect, but it certainly isn’t the attack he launches on me.

 

**_Jason_ **

****

My vision blurs around something suspiciously like tears, burning like salt, as I lunge forward with my blade drawn. He didn’t expect my first move, but he dodges the next ones neatly. His posture is calculated and focused, whereas I can feel that mine is sloppy, emotional.

            He’s holding back on me.

            I snarl, and shove him into the wall, aiming a knee at his gut. He catches the blow with a grunt, and I use the momentary advantage to plunge the knife into his forearm. He hisses, darting away from me for a brief moment with the offending appendage already starting to stream blood. But it isn’t but a few seconds before we’re devolving into violence again, fire meeting ice. I’m forced to use my weight more than a few times to gain the upper hand as we roll on the floorboards, exchanging blows and grunted curses.      

            I catch Bruce in a rear naked choke somewhere along the lines, a rare commodity and a certain indicator that he’s going easy, and I pull my forearm taught against his throat. It’s strange satisfaction when he grunts, and I feel his hands grasping at my arm weakly. Even if he’s letting me have the victory, it still feels good to win, to hurt him like I hurt.

            I tighten my grip to the point he starts to make strangled sounds, and I feel a scowl stir my expression. “That’s it then? You’re just going to give up like you did five years ago?”

            The taunt has the desired effect of making him angry, and I feel his hips twist before I have time to react. He knocks the back of his head into me, and I catch the brunt of the force with my teeth. It’s enough to loosen my grip on his neck, and Bruce immediately uses the weakness to grasp my head and push it into the floorboards. I fight him for control of the situation, but he has an elbow pinned at my throat before I can do much more than breathe.

When I struggle violently, bucking my hips up to throw him off, Bruce simply turns and grasps the knife I’ve abandoned somewhere beside us. I feel it catch my shoulder, and I let out a yelp as he sends the blade straight through the muscle to bury itself in the wood below me.

            Still, I can’t exactly be mad, because he’s giving me what I want. He’s fighting back, and for that, I am immensely grateful.

            “Enough!” He hisses the word like a prayer, teeth gritted, and this close, I can smell coffee on his breath. The anger, the adrenaline of his blood on my hands, is draining away with the night itself, and I can do little but bend to his will and let myself go limp.

            As predicted, Bruce doesn’t hold me here long. He’s never been a fan of overdrawn victories, so he climbs off of me with a weary sigh after a few moments. I can feel his frown when he stands and looks down at me with blood tracing his mouth and running down his fingertips. If I could see his eyes past the white lenses shrouding them, I imagine they’d be grey with disappointment.

            But what isn’t predicted is when he shakes his head, and lets out a deep sigh, “Jason…I’m sorry. For everything.”

            I stare at him a long moment, trying to fathom an apology from the Bat himself, but it seems all too fake. It seems like a dream, so I cast my eyes to my shoulder as I pull the knife from the bulk of the muscle with a grimace. When I let the knife fall back to the floor, slick with blood, I feel a worn chuckle work its way up from my chest.

            Something tired and bone deep wraps around my chest like warm hands, and I don’t bother questioning the tears this time when they threaten at my vision. “Bruce…I forgive you for not saving me. I can even forgive you for replacing me, for forgetting me. I understand it.”

            He flinches just the slightest of bits, like I’ve slapped him, but he doesn’t move to stop me when I pull myself to a wavering stand. I catch my balance against a door frame, drawing my gun from my thigh holster with intentional slowness. Bruce watches my actions, but again, he doesn’t move to stop me. He just watches, mouth bracketed in pain.

            “But what I don’t understand…” I hesitate, leaning against the side of the closet door as I flip the latch and pull open the doorway, “is why you let _him_ live.”

            I reach a hand to grasp Joker by the collar, finding that he’s gained consciousness, at least partially, in the last half hour. I pull him from the shadows of the closet and throw him at our feet, letting the gun stay aimed at the clown, my finger resting on the trigger comfortably.

            Joker squints up at us in the dim lighting of the apartment, and like a child on Christmas morning, he grins through broken teeth and split lips. “You gotta give the kid some credit, Batsy. He’s very creative…and feisty if my memory serves!”

            I plant a boot in the back of his neck, forcing a whining cry from him as I dig the tread in. He squirms beneath my heel for a moment, but eventually, he gives a small grunt and falls lax.

            I cock the hammer of the gun easily, watching the sharp flicker of Joker’s eyes as they flash up to the weapon aiming at his temple. “You’ll be quiet until I tell you to speak, Joker, or I’ll put a bullet in your lap first.”

            For all his showboating, the threat to his manhood sobers him a bit, and I see a sliver of hatred flash through those coal black eyes. His mouth tilts downwards, and he squints up at me vengefully. “Have it your way, birdbrain. You know I like to watch anyway.”

             When I straighten away from Joker, I’m relieved to find that Batman hasn’t moved. He’s still standing across from me, arms comfortably poised at his sides, posture unbothered. He’s the picture of composure, a demeanor he adopts whenever something becomes too close, too painful, and I admit that I feel a bit envious of his ability to detach himself from the situation. My heart is pounding like a tribal drum in my chest, and I can feel sweat tracing fingers greedily down my back. The only thing keeping the gun from trembling is how tightly I’m clutching the grip.

_I just want this to be over. Please. Please, Bruce. Let me end this._

             “Ignoring what he’s done in the past…choosing to overlook the families he’s decimated, the loved ones he’s crippled…” Bruce’s mouth twitches around a grimace, and it bolsters me onwards seeing that he knows what I refer to. “Blindly, stupidly letting him live when we _both_ know he should be worm food by now…”

             His fingers twitch at his sides. I catch the movement in my periphery, a slip in composure that harkens back to arguments we shared without the masks, and it’s difficult not to let the memories cloud my judgement, my mission here.

             I’m tired. So, so tired.

            “I won’t be judge, jury, and executioner. You know that. You’ve known that from the beginning.”

            I give a half-smile that feels more snarl than humor. “Oh, yeah. How could I forget? What’s the saying you pounded into our heads…justice, not vengeance, right?”

            Bruce’s mouth flattens, and I imagine his eyes, icy blue, remote, narrowing behind the white lenses. “Yes.”

            I nod, crouching slightly so that I can rest the barrel of the gun against the clown’s temple. He flinches slightly, but he doesn’t move. I imagine he finds the whole scenario probably quite exciting. Maybe even a bit arousing.

            Sick fuck.

            “Justice was served, right? He went to prison and stayed for how long again?” It’s defensive anger I feel now, rolling in cool waves from the taut posture of Bruce’s shoulders, the arch of his hands into fists. “What, three months, before he broke out? How long did it take to catch him that time? And the next, and the next, and the next?”

            Bruce says nothing, and it’s almost a relief that he doesn’t try to defend the lunacy of repeating the same action over and over again, and yet still expecting different results. Isn’t that supposed to be the definition of insanity? Or is it just stupidity?

            I turn the barrel against Joker’s temple, trying to picture what it will feel like when he’s no longer alive. I try to imagine what I might be like without the knowledge of his survival looming over me, but I can’t enjoy the thought like I should be able to. I’m too quickly absorbed with the realization that he’ll never leave me. Not really. Even after he’s dead, he’ll still be in my mind, in my sheets, in my body. Like a brand. I can never cleanse myself of him.

            “You know, I thought I’d be the last person you’d ever let him hurt. God, I was wrong, wasn’t I?” My voice wavers, crumbles beneath the pressure, and I’m forced to grip the gun harder so it doesn’t fall.

_You’re weak. So goddamn weak, Jason. Focus on the mission._

           I swallow, threading steel into my stance when I level Bruce with another scowl. I don’t sound as strong as I want to. “If it had been _you_ that Joker tortured, beat, that he…violated…If he had taken you from me, I would’ve used every breath in my body to hunt him down and send him off to hell. I wouldn’t have rested until you’d been avenged.” Fuck, I sound emotional, thready…uncontrolled. Thirteen again.

           I’m spiraling downwards. Tail spinning towards my destruction.

          “You don’t understand.”

          A bitter laugh breaks the seam of my lips, and it feels like bleach on my tongue. “You’re right—I don’t. So enlighten me. Tell me again why it’s too hard to cross that line, why you just _can’t_ make yourself kill.”

         He draws a tight breath, his voice like ground salt against lemon when he responds.

          “No. It wouldn’t be… _hard_ to kill him. It’d be too damned easy actually. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by since I lost you that I haven’t thought about torturing him in a million different ways, making him pay for what he’s taken from us…”

           I wasn’t expecting pain in his response, so I’m surprised when his jaw tenses and his shoulders hunch in a way I’ve seen only a few times before. It’s a pleading posture, and I feel very much like a child again looking up at him.

           “But if I let myself kill him, if I went down that road…I’d never come up for air. I’d lose myself forever.”

           Desperation starts to wind around my chest like a boa constrictor, tightening a little bit with every breath, and I struggle to swallow past the lump forming in my throat. My eyes are burning again.

           “I’m not talking about killing all of them, B. Not Penguin, or Harvey, or Clayface…just Joker. Just this one…and doing it for me. For your son.”

            I feel like I’m a little boy, clinging to daddy’s pantlegs and begging for attention, but if there’s one thing I know about Bruce, it’s that he was never very good at changing his mind. I shouldn’t be surprised by his answer, it shouldn’t threaten to destroy me…but it does.

            “I’m sorry…I can’t.”

            Spiraling. Spiraling. Spiraling. Brace for impact.

            “Then you leave me with no choice.”

            I hoist Joker to his feet abruptly, gripping him around his throat from behind as I force him to stand. He does so with a cackling hiss, and I feel him leaning heavily into me even as I press the gun’s barrel to his temple. He likes the attention on him, seems to get off on being the center of chaos, and he certainly finds himself in the middle of the fray tonight. I’m fairly certain he views this whole situation as his crowning performance, and he is certainly milking the audience.

            Too bad he won’t live long enough to hear the standing ovation.

            I hear, more than see, Joker’s grin as he giggles and preens, “Oh, I like where this is going…”

            I tighten my forearm against his throat until he sputters and falls quiet, but I don’t take my eyes off Bruce. He’s watching me intently, and I’m sure that he knows what I’m going to say. He may not have been an excellent communicator, but he was never obtuse.

            I reach my free hand to my waistband, withdrawing my other handgun and flicking it towards Bruce fluidly. He catches the weapon open palmed, but he doesn’t grip it like he should. He just holds it like he would a grenade, cautious and tense. I hate how he looks at me when his head tips upwards. Like I’ve betrayed him. Like I’ve hurt him.

            _Focus on the mission, Jason._

            I grind the gun into the Joker’s temple, posture tighter than a bowstring. “If you won’t kill this son of a bitch, then I will. And if you want to stop me, you’re gonna have to kill me. Either way, one of us goes. This time, it’s your choice who.”

            A pause, so deep and silent I hear the neighborhood dogs barking again, feel the bite of winter snow outside from the window left cracked. Our breaths have started to fog between us, plumes of mist rising to disperse on the ceiling.

            My heart is beating so hard, I fear it may try to jump out of my chest.

            “You know I can’t. I won’t.”

            Joker makes a clucking sound, rasping past the pressure on his windpipe. “Oh, don’t be a coward now, batsy. Give the boy what he wants. It’s only fair since you did let him die and all.”

            I hiss, pushing my elbow into his side sharply. “You can and you will. It’s him…or me.”

I lift my chin, praying for fortitude that left me hours ago. I’m so tired. I want nothing more than to disappear into the fog of breath and never come up. Part of me hopes that Bruce kills me, because it would mean that I could finally rest. At my core, I know that I just want to feel safe again…but I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know what to do anymore.

            So, I stick to the plan. It’s all I have now.

            “Decide.”  
            I hear the apology as clearly as if he’d spoken it out loud. He stares at me for a half breath more, mouth parted as if to say something, and then he drops the gun. It falls to the hardwood with a hollow thud, and Bruce wastes no time in turning away from me and heading for the open window again. Fuck. I should’ve known he’d find option three. I should’ve known that he would never let me back him into a corner.

            I guess, on some level, I did know. Otherwise I never would’ve installed the explosives under the floorboards. The resolution settles over me like a warm blanket, muting the sounds and colors of the room around me into soft greys, making everything feel a few feet from me. Detaching my physical self from the room never was so easy as it is now.

            I suppose it’s my body’s reaction to knowing I’m about to die again.

            I lower the gun just enough the retrieve the detonator from my pocket, and I set the charge without so much as a moment of hesitation. In my mind, I had imagined that I’d kill Joker and then turn the gun on Bruce. I wouldn’t murder him, but I’d clip a shoulder, a knee…not enough to kill, but certainly enough to give me some time to say my words and then go.

            But I don’t have the strength to shoot Bruce tonight. Frankly, I don’t want to. I just want this to be over.

            T-minus twenty seconds and counting.

            Bruce hears the click of the detonator before I have time to discard it, and I don’t bother dodging him when he turns and lunges at me. I let him take me down to the floor like a rag doll, catching a chair and crushing it beneath me. He disarms me with the speed and precision of the Bat, yanking the detonation trigger from my hands with a growl.

            “Where is it?”

            I say nothing, knowing it would be pointless to try and diffuse the bomb at this point. I designed it to take at least three minutes to neutralize the charges, and by my count, we have about fifteen seconds left. Bruce shakes me by the jacket violently, repeating the question, and he must be distracted by my silence, because he doesn’t even see Joker coming. He doesn’t have time to counter when Joker leaps on his back and begins clawing at his face viciously.

            He’s screeching something about Batman ‘spoiling the ending’, ‘ruining the punchline’, and Bruce is forced to stumble back from me as he tries to throw his passenger. I use the opportunity to scoot into the wall at my back, cradling my wounded shoulder and drawing my knees into my chest tight. I note the muffled sounds of Bruce and Joker grappling for dominance deeper in the room, and I close my eyes to block the images of violence.

            Bruce will be okay. He always comes out of these things narrowly, scraping by with the villain dangling behind him…but he survives. He’ll be alright. I’ll just be another casualty, and the world will reset itself as it should be. If I get lucky, Joker will perish here with me.

            I draw in a soft breath, tasting winter on the air, listening to the soft beeping from beneath the floorboards. It sounds like it’s coming through deep, deep water. Seven, six, five, four…

            _Goodbye, Bruce._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to look up, but it's gonna be a rough transition for the whole family. Hold on tight folks. This one's angsty and I didn't shy away from the tears!

**_Dick_ **

****

It’s three in the morning when I get the call. Four o’clock by the time I retrieve them from downtown and get them home. I make quick, steady work in the surgery, mending what I can, praying for what I can’t. It’s seven by the time I’ve patched them both into stability again, but the cave remains timeless even as the rest of the world begins to rouse.

            The stillness of the cave is otherworldly, like a deep, deep lake without ripples. Almost as if our small corner of the world has finally released a long-held breath. I suppose, in a way, it has.

            Jason was the worse of the two. He suffered several fractures and burns along his legs and arms. A concussion probably. Perhaps a bruised organ or two, not to mention the stab wound in his shoulder and the shrapnel I pulled from his shoulder blades.

            But he’ll _live_. And that’s what really matters, isn’t it? Jason will live.

            I round the corner to the infirmary, mopping my hands with a towel. I’ve only just finished washing the blood from underneath my fingernails, but I feel like it’s on me still. I suppose with the amount I saw and handled over the past few hours, I’ll probably find more as the days wear on.

            I shouldn’t be particularly surprised to find that Jason’s bedside is occupied, but I am all the same. The last I left Bruce, he was hooked up to an IV pole, watching as I worked over Jason’s unconscious form. He’d looked waxy then, afraid…more afraid than I’ve ever seen him perhaps and close to passing out from loss of blood and a concussion. I’d had to force him to go sit down for his own safety.

            Now, he’s seated at Jason’s bedside with his back to me, leaning forward onto the edge of the mattress with his forearms. One hand strokes Jason’s head absently, toying with his hair in a paternal gesture. He’s wearing a black terrycloth robe and slippers, which makes me think he might follow my earlier advice of catching some sleep before Jason wakes up.

            “Hey.” I touch him on the shoulder softly, still a bit alarmed when his eyes swivel to me and he looks like he does. Dark circles smudging down to his cheek bones, glassy blue gaze, and a mouth drawn with worry...like a dishrag wrung out and left to dry wrinkled.

            I take a seat at his side, letting myself fall heavily into the plastic chair. It’s the most rest I’ve had in several hours, and I’ll admit, I’m tired. I bump Bruce’s shoulder with mine lightly, working for a smile. “You look like hell.”

            He grunts. “I feel like it.”

            I wait for him to say something more, but his eyes have shifted back to Jason. He’s watching the rise and fall of his chest, gaze trained on the monitors keeping track of his vitals, the drip of the IV administering antibiotics and pain medication. I can see the anxiety in the tense of his shoulders, the way his hair stands on end from running his fingers through it compulsively. Even the slight tap of his fingertips on the bedspread tell me he’s worrying himself too thin.

            Too much, too fast. He’s bound to be exhausted, especially with his injuries.

            “You know, B, I can take over here if you wanna catch some shut eye.”

            Eyes, brackish with weariness and smoke, flick to me and hold. Tighten with stubborn resolve.

            “I’m not leaving him.”

            I chew the inside of my lip, eyeing the way he sags in his chair, how he leans a bit heavily into the IV pole at his side. He’s going to hurt himself staying awake this long, refusing anything but saline and antibiotics. Stubborn old coot.

            I suppose, I could sedate him if need be…Alfred would certainly agree with that line of thinking, but then again…

            “You wouldn’t be leaving him, just…resting. Med bay 2 has an open cot you can take across the hall.”

            “No.”

            I sigh, pressing a hand to his shoulder. I give it a light squeeze, trying to be gentle in case he’s in any pain. “Come on, Bruce. You’re dead on your feet and you’re not going to be of any use to Jay if you keep going like this.”

            He stays planted in his chair, staring at Jason’s sleeping figure with a gaze torn between agreeing with me and staunchly denying it. But he says nothing in response to me, choosing to remain silently obstinate.

            “Bruce, you need rest to recover. You know it, I know it, and I’ve got tranquilizer darts that know it if you really want to fight me on this.”

            His eyes are tight when they shoot to me this time, mouth bracketed with anger when he lifts his chin and levels me with a glare. The unspoken message is actually quite loud. _Try it and you die._

            I’m forced to let out a loud sigh, and I scrub a hand over my face in exasperation. I had hoped to broach the subject a little bit gentler, but seeing as how he’s being so stubborn, I suppose I’ll have to tackle it head on. I should’ve known Bruce would demand nothing but.

            “Look, I didn’t want to have to bring this up, but seeing you when he wakes up might…fluster him.” That gets his attention, and it hurts more than I expected to see the little jolt of wounded surprise that flickers across his expression. “It’s just that…things kind of ended on a rocky note between you two, and if I’m not incorrect in assuming, he did try to blow you both to smithereens. He might need some…time before you guys talk again. Space.”

            “Time…” He repeats the word as if it’s not quite computing, expression carefully guarded now.

            I nod, glancing down at my own hands when I swallow a lump of hesitation. I hate hurting him like this. “Bruce…he may not _want_ to see you. Or even me for that matter. But the point is…” I shrug, afraid to meet his gaze for fear of the pain waiting there, “I don’t think you should be here when he wakes up. Not yet at least. Just…let me get him ready, okay? Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself if he decides to get physical again.”

            Bruce stares at me, exhaustion marking his skin a paler shade than normal, and it’s hurt now that makes his eyes a vibrant shade of silver blue. But Bruce is anything but stupid, and he’s certainly not one to force his affection when it isn’t wanted. He’s rational to the point of pain, so naturally, this is the argument that has the most effect on him. I only wish I didn’t have to put it so bluntly.

            He gives a slight nod, looking down to his hands still resting on the bedspread. “I understand.” He murmurs the words, just barely audible, and shifts slightly. He pulls his hands away from the bed. “I’ll…go to the other med bay. Wait until he’s…safe.”

            Bruce stands, leaning into the IV pole as he begins shuffling towards the entrance. He’s acquiescing, giving into what we both know is best, but he sounds like he’s chewing on glass. It makes my chest ache just looking at him, and I find myself rising to follow him. I catch him at the door before he goes, and like I’ve done so many times before when he hasn’t known how to ask, I wrap him in a tight embrace.

            He doesn’t reciprocate at first, but when he does, the answering embrace is firm and warm. I listen to his heartbeat for a moment against my ear, remind myself again and again that he and Jason will be alright, and I try to keep us both grounded. It’s like holding a handful of balloons down in a gust of wind, but I manage. Somehow, someway, I keep us together.

            “He’ll come around, Bruce. I promise.”

            He stiffens, arms like a cage around me. I hear his breathing stop for just a moment, a beat of stillness. And then I feel Bruce’s chin dip against me, the only acknowledgement I get that he even heard me. When he pulls away though, his eyes are hazy with a sheen of unshed tears. He sniffs once, rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms, and then disappears through the exit.

            I watch him go for a moment, listening to the sound of the door closing down the hallway before I finally turn back to Jason’s sleeping figure. I let out a deep breath, something that’s been staying unspent in my chest since this whole ordeal began, and I let myself really feel the events of the past couple weeks. I don’t hide how tired I am as I move about the room, dimming the lights and checking his monitors. I don’t even bother disguising the few tears I shed when I check Jason’s bandages and I think about his broken corpse at 13.

            We were so close to losing him again, so close to repeating history.

            I let myself consider the reality of having him slip through my fingers like water through a sieve, fleeting and vibrant, and it near breaks me. I’m forced to sit in the chair Bruce vacated, holding one of Jason’s hands between my own just to reassure myself that he’s still here.

            It’s an hour before he starts to wake up.

            At first, it’s just the elevated heart rate that tells me he’s coming back, but it isn’t long before he starts moaning and twitching. It’s the kind of drugged out, pain-induced groaning that makes my heart squeeze, but there’s not much I can do but hold his hand and pray he slogs through the worst of it soon.

            When the moans escalate to weary cries, guttural sounds of pain like sobs as he begins tossing and jerking, I stand and begin mopping a cool compress I’d set aside over his forehead. He’s sweating profusely, clawing at his bandages with harsh fingernails and tears have started to stream down his cheeks in earnest. Still, his eyes are squeezed shut tightly, his teeth barred in some horrible nightmare.

            “It’s okay. I’m here with you, Jay. I’m not going anywhere.”

            I keep brushing the hair back from his forehead, swiping the compress across his brow, murmuring words of comfort as he slowly finds his way to consciousness. The amount of pain medication I’ve pumped him with is enough to knock anyone out, and it would definitely cause some confusion upon waking.

            When his eyes do at last flicker open, they’re unfocused and hazy, ringed with red from crying and half swollen shut.

            I press my hands to either side of his face, forcing his panicked gaze to find mine and hold. “Hey buddy. It’s okay. You’re alright.” His skin is clammy under my palms, but his eyes finally snag on me, and I see the first flickers of reality hit him as he blinks up at me. I smile lightly, “Hey. There you are. Welcome back.”

            Bottle green eyes sweep over me, and he blinks rapidly. The heart monitor begins to slow, but he’s still breathing heavily. His mouth doesn’t seem to work very well, because he stares at me for a moment, lips moving around words before he eventually rasps out a weary, “Dick?”

            I nod, brushing a hand through his sweaty hair, “Yeah, it’s Dick. I’ve got you.”

            A pause, a breath, a whispered, “Am I dead?”

            I shake my head, “No. Bruce and I patched you up. You’ll make it through just fine.”

            He stares at me, wide eyed and in shock for several moments. I begin to question whether he’s in there completely, he stares so long. It’s like he’s waiting for something, anything, to happen. Like he’s waiting for the dream to end still.

            This isn’t a dream though, and I think he must realize it, because his expression rapidly crumbles in on itself like a wet piece of paper and his shoulders scrunch to the point of pain. He fissures, cracks, and then splits wide open. Tears that had ceased running sideways down to the pillow a few minutes ago start anew, accompanied now by the horrible sounds of weeping. The kind that comes out of you like a whispered prayer, something from deep inside you. It near tears me in two just seeing it.

            I can’t tell if it’s an effect of the medication or just the overwhelming realization that he’s going to live, but Jason lets me fold him into a hug without protest. He buries his face in my neck like he never used to, and bandaged arms wrap around me like I’m a buoy in the ocean. I let him sob into my shoulder, let him stain my shirt with tears and snot until there’s nothing left, and I don’t let go. I hold him tight to me, sensing, somehow, that it’s been a long time since he’s cried like that. A long time since he’s felt something so deeply that it just had to escape.

            I shed my own tears, because God it feels good to have him again. It feels good to worry about him, to think about him in the present tense. I can’t stop whispering thankful prayers over him, hoping against all hope that this is the last time I have to see him this broken. I apologize for the things Joker did and those he didn’t, for the time Jason was alone and the ways in which we moved on. But mostly, I just breathe him in. I hold him so tightly, he starts to become an extension of me, just like he was all those years ago.

            Brother. Friend. Partner.

            We stay locked like this for a long time, and it’s several moments still before Jason begins to calm again. His breathing is still ragged with tears, but he’s more level, more himself when I decide to pull back.

            I hold both sides of his face again, looking down into those bottle green eyes, watery with tears when they look back to me, and I pull in a deep, shuddery breath. “You almost killed yourself, Jay…we thought we lost you.”

            He nods, a stilted little gesture, and his voice is hoarse when he manages a thready, “I know.”

            I swipe my palms over his cheeks briefly, wiping away the tears there as I work to even myself out. I tether myself to this moment, to the steady cadence of the heart monitor, the shred of innocent reunion still clinging to this messed up family, and I try not to let myself blow away.

            But, God…it’s hard not to imagine what it would’ve been like if Jason weren’t so lucky. I might’ve been collecting pieces of him from beneath rubble, preparing a funeral again. A surge of tears rushes to my eyes, that fist of relief so strong it feels like it might crush me flooding back into my stomach.

            I struggle to swallow, only managing the gesture halfway. My voice still sounds weak and froggy when it whispers, “Don’t ever do that again, okay? You scared the shit out of me.”

            His chin bobs again, those eyes like spring leaves puffy from tears, his throat working around a swallow. He worries the inside of his lip, blinking against the tears he can’t seem to stop.

            He sounds very much like a child when he murmurs a broken, “I’m sorry,” and it’s all I can do not to sob in front of him. I’m so close to breaking. So close to losing it, when I know I have to be strong. I need to be the strong one for all of us, because no one else can be.

             It isn’t fair…it just is.

            I shake my head, tipping my forehead to his briefly, “Hey, it’s alright. We’re gonna be just fine, okay? I’ve got you. We’re together in this, right? Family.”

            He nods, scrubbing at his cheeks even as he sucks in a sharp breath. I draw back, putting a little distance between us. I can see he’s slowly coming back to himself more, and with it, the walls are rising. But still, he’s got a hold of one of my hands tightly, and I’m in no mood to remind him of that fact by moving. I let the gesture go unspoken, choosing to remain standing next to the bed.

            When he does at last drop my hand, his eyes flicker to the doorway, tightening slightly. His voice is still raw, like he’s been drinking chlorine, but it’s clearer now, more composed than it was moments ago.

            “Is Bruce…”

            “He’s fine. A few burns and sprains, but nothing severe.” I glance over my shoulder at the med bay door, wondering if Bruce is listening in. I wouldn’t put it past him. “He’s just down the hall.”

            Jason nods slightly, gaze distant when it goes back to the ceiling. He grimaces briefly, and I think it must be the pain from the burns and fractures. I’ll have to dose him again with morphine to keep him comfortable and compliant. I round the bedside to his IV bag, already drawing up a syringe of medication without asking him if he needs it. If he’s anything like I remember, he’ll refuse and suffer. I’m not giving him the option.

            It’s when I’m adjusting the flow of fluids from the IV bag that Jason speaks, just a quiet whisper, barely audible, but it’s enough to make my hands stall.

           “He must hate me.”

            I glance up to his face, find eyes like cool jade watching me from behind a wall of protections designed to prevent injury, but he looks raw, wide open to hurt. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks thirteen again.

            I shake my head, looking down to my hands as I adjust his blankets, prodding at the bandages on his arms, checking that he’s comfortable. “No. He doesn’t hate you.”

            I hear the disbelief in his voice when he murmurs, “I tried to kill him.”

            My hands stop. “You tried to kill _yourself_ , Jay.” I meet his gaze again, finding his expression caught somewhere between the thresholds of pain and apathy. He’s trying so hard to be strong. Stronger than he needs to be.

            “He’s heartbroken by you, worried sick over you, but hate?” I shake my head, “Bruce _can’t_ hate you. It just isn’t in him.”

I look away from him when his eyes go clear with tears again, and his jaw clenches to keep them at bay. I don’t have the strength to watch him cry again, not when I feel like I’ve been spread too thin this morning. I continue working, because it’s something to do with my hands and it gives me an excuse to stay for a few more minutes.

            After several moments of checking bandages and adjusting medications, I risk a sparing glance at Jason. His eyes have gone heavy under the influence of more pain killers, and his posture has relaxed slightly. I can see he’s only a few moments away from unconsciousness, but he’s still watching me intently. When he does at last fall into the throes of sleep, he’s frowning and the tears haven’t left his eyes.

            I press a thumb to the wrinkle between his brows, trying to smooth the expression, but it’s as stubborn as Jason. I eventually have to give up trying to make it go away, and I instead brush a hand through his hair, still damp with sweat, and step out of the room.

            When the door closes behind me, and all that’s left in the hallway is the distant sound of machines and a bloody morning’s stillness, I press my back into the wall, and I lower myself to the ground. I let my body ache like it’s wanted to, let my head fall against my kneecaps as exhaustion floods my system. And not for the first time this morning, I let myself cry. I cover my face with both hands and I cry. Not like a man, not like a warrior, but like a child.

            It feels terrible and wonderful all at once…but I need it.

            I don’t realize how long I’ve been sitting here, pressed into the wall, crying my eyes out, until I feel someone settle at my side heavily. I know almost immediately that it’s Bruce, and I don’t bother trying to hide my breakdown when I glance up to him. He’s seen me at my worst, when I was more animal than man, and so it’s not a surprise to see he’s willing to meet me in the fray again.

            Seeing your parent when you’re crying always has the unique effect of bringing forth more tears, and this time is no different. I take one look at those calm grey eyes, the apology echoing like a promise in his posture, and I completely fall apart. Whatever vestiges of control I was trying to hold onto dissipate into whispered dust.

            Bruce tucks me into his side, beneath a scratchy wool blanket from the second med bay, and he lets me sob like a baby. I cry into that familiar robe he’s had since I was a child, breathing in the smell of coffee and antiseptic clinging to him, and I let myself be grounded by the arms gripping too tightly. It helps to tie myself to these smells, these familiar feelings of safety, and the break in me eventually starts to close. Little bits of me begin to gather themselves back together, the iron giant collecting himself into a whole, until I’m sniffling but calm again.

            I can feel Bruce sigh against me before he says anything, and it’s a rare moment of affection when he cards a hand through my hair and tucks me under his chin tighter. “You alright?”

            I nod, “Yeah. I’m okay. I just…needed a moment.”

            Bruce hums like he knows better than anyone, and I let myself believe that without question. It’s hard to remember that Bruce is human too sometimes, but in moments like these…I’m immensely glad for it.

            I feel a breath of hesitation before he speaks, like drawing glass over an open wound, “And Jason?”

            “He came out of sedation pretty rough, but…he’s okay. He’ll be alright.”

            Bruce nods, and it’s almost surreal to me when he says exactly what I expected him to. Sometimes, he can be predictable…but when it comes to guilt? He operates like clockwork.

             “I’m sorry you had to deal with this tonight, Dick.”

             I lift a shoulder, “No place I’d rather be.”

             He grunts, and I note with impossible gratitude that he’s still holding me tightly. “Still. I don’t… _like_ putting you through this. It’s my responsibility to handle Jason.”

             I push into him slightly with my elbow, “He’s my brother, you know? I think that means we share a little bit of the responsibility, don’t you?”

             “Maybe.” He concedes, but I can still feel the tension in his posture when he sighs and shakes his head slightly. “My children…all four of you…you are the most important things in my life. I never knew I could love as deeply as I have you boys, or that it would change me so thoroughly, but it has. When you grow, I grow…and when you break, I break.”

            Bruce pauses, something like gravel making his voice twilight and sharp edges. “Seeing him like this, Dick…it damn near killed me. We almost lost him tonight. Again.”

            “I know.”

            “And now that it’s over, I…I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to fix _him_. And that makes me feel impossibly angry with myself, because I’m his father. I should be able to make this better for him. I should be able to protect him.”

            “You can’t protect him from everything, B…especially not himself. But you can be present. You can stay.”

            He sighs, something weighty and chained releasing from him as he sags back into the wall again. “I know.”

            I lean into Bruce, feeling heavy and tired even as we hash open our wounds together. I close my eyes and inhale the laundry detergent Alfred so likes to use, the fragrance of old coffee, the gentle hum of machinery somewhere beyond us. It occurs to me how reminiscent the image is, seated in the hallway with blood on our clothes, legs crossed in front of us as we lean in close and share little bits of our souls. It’s like reliving my childhood all over again, except this time, we’re equals. Partners. The best of friends.

            And as terrible as this night has been, as hollowed out as I feel…I wouldn’t change it for the world.

 


End file.
